Good Q Peter. I’m hoping to put out a set of research Q’s that I’d find useful in the new year. But I’m most excited about Q’s you and other EAs come up with independently because they’re more likely to identify opportunities we’re not thinking about or scrutinize claims we take for granted.
Great Question! Similarly to Open Phil, ACE will also be putting out a set of research questions in January, we have solicited views from several groups in the movement to help inform our own research direction over the next year.
One particular question I’m interested in, is the trade-off that seems to exist between promising interventions and more neglected regions. i.e. countries where animal advocacy is less developed typically have organizations that are working on less effective interventions, but a grant there to build the movement may be substantially more impactful in the longer term than funding to more established regions. The combination of uncertainty of impact in different regions and across different interventions can be hard to separate out, which is why I think we’re taking the right approach currently by funding a spread of smaller opportunities.
So I would say profiles of promising countries (e.g. at ACE we’re currently looking into the BRIC countries) to better understand the opportunities and limitations of advocacy in different regions would be really useful, as well as further intervention-specific research.
Another issue is identifying good funding opportunities. In my own experience, I’ve found utilizing existing networks to be more fruitful than searching from scratch when identifying promising new funding opportunities, however I’m aware that this can lead to a bias particularly towards opportunities in N America/Europe.
What new research would be helpful to finding and/or evaluating opportunities?
Good Q Peter. I’m hoping to put out a set of research Q’s that I’d find useful in the new year. But I’m most excited about Q’s you and other EAs come up with independently because they’re more likely to identify opportunities we’re not thinking about or scrutinize claims we take for granted.
Great Question! Similarly to Open Phil, ACE will also be putting out a set of research questions in January, we have solicited views from several groups in the movement to help inform our own research direction over the next year.
One particular question I’m interested in, is the trade-off that seems to exist between promising interventions and more neglected regions. i.e. countries where animal advocacy is less developed typically have organizations that are working on less effective interventions, but a grant there to build the movement may be substantially more impactful in the longer term than funding to more established regions. The combination of uncertainty of impact in different regions and across different interventions can be hard to separate out, which is why I think we’re taking the right approach currently by funding a spread of smaller opportunities.
So I would say profiles of promising countries (e.g. at ACE we’re currently looking into the BRIC countries) to better understand the opportunities and limitations of advocacy in different regions would be really useful, as well as further intervention-specific research.
Another issue is identifying good funding opportunities. In my own experience, I’ve found utilizing existing networks to be more fruitful than searching from scratch when identifying promising new funding opportunities, however I’m aware that this can lead to a bias particularly towards opportunities in N America/Europe.