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Attitudes to the use of animals in biomedical research: Effects of stigma and selected research project summaries

Three groups of participants (largely recruited from the UK) completed a survey to examine attitudes to the use of animals in biomedical research, after reading the lay (N = 182) or technical (N = 201) summary of a research project, or no summary (N = 215). They then completed a survey comprising th...

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Autores principales: Cassaday, Helen J., Cavenagh, Lucy, Aluthgamage, Hiruni, Crooks, Aoife, Bonardi, Charlotte, Stevenson, Carl W., Waite, Lauren, Muir, Charlotte
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10437917/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37594971
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0290232
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author Cassaday, Helen J.
Cavenagh, Lucy
Aluthgamage, Hiruni
Crooks, Aoife
Bonardi, Charlotte
Stevenson, Carl W.
Waite, Lauren
Muir, Charlotte
author_facet Cassaday, Helen J.
Cavenagh, Lucy
Aluthgamage, Hiruni
Crooks, Aoife
Bonardi, Charlotte
Stevenson, Carl W.
Waite, Lauren
Muir, Charlotte
author_sort Cassaday, Helen J.
collection PubMed
description Three groups of participants (largely recruited from the UK) completed a survey to examine attitudes to the use of animals in biomedical research, after reading the lay (N = 182) or technical (N = 201) summary of a research project, or no summary (N = 215). They then completed a survey comprising the animal attitude (AAS), animal purpose (APQ), belief in animal mind (BAM) and empathy quotient (EQ) scales. The APQ was adapted to assess attitudes towards the use of animals for research into disorders selected to be perceived as controllable and so ‘blameworthy’ and potentially stigmatised (addiction and obesity) and ‘psychological’ (schizophrenia and addiction) versus ‘physical’ (cardiovascular disease and obesity), across selected species (rats, mice, fish pigs and monkeys). Thus, the APQ was used to examine how the effects of perceived controllability and the nature of the disorder affected attitudes to animal use, in different species and in the three summary groups. As expected, attitudes to animal use as measured by the AAS and the APQ (total) correlated positively with BAM and EQ scores, consistent with the assumption that the scales all measured pro-welfare attitudes. Participants in the two research summary groups did not differentiate the use of rats, mice and fish (or fish and pigs in the technical summary group), whereas all species were differentiated in the no summary group. Participants given the lay summary were as concerned about the use of animals for schizophrenia as for addiction research. APQ ratings otherwise indicated more concern for animals used for addiction research (and for obesity compared to cardiovascular disease in all summary groups). Therefore, the information provided by a research project summary influenced attitudes to use of animals in biomedical research. However, there was no overall increase in agreement with animal use in either of the summary groups.
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spelling pubmed-104379172023-08-19 Attitudes to the use of animals in biomedical research: Effects of stigma and selected research project summaries Cassaday, Helen J. Cavenagh, Lucy Aluthgamage, Hiruni Crooks, Aoife Bonardi, Charlotte Stevenson, Carl W. Waite, Lauren Muir, Charlotte PLoS One Research Article Three groups of participants (largely recruited from the UK) completed a survey to examine attitudes to the use of animals in biomedical research, after reading the lay (N = 182) or technical (N = 201) summary of a research project, or no summary (N = 215). They then completed a survey comprising the animal attitude (AAS), animal purpose (APQ), belief in animal mind (BAM) and empathy quotient (EQ) scales. The APQ was adapted to assess attitudes towards the use of animals for research into disorders selected to be perceived as controllable and so ‘blameworthy’ and potentially stigmatised (addiction and obesity) and ‘psychological’ (schizophrenia and addiction) versus ‘physical’ (cardiovascular disease and obesity), across selected species (rats, mice, fish pigs and monkeys). Thus, the APQ was used to examine how the effects of perceived controllability and the nature of the disorder affected attitudes to animal use, in different species and in the three summary groups. As expected, attitudes to animal use as measured by the AAS and the APQ (total) correlated positively with BAM and EQ scores, consistent with the assumption that the scales all measured pro-welfare attitudes. Participants in the two research summary groups did not differentiate the use of rats, mice and fish (or fish and pigs in the technical summary group), whereas all species were differentiated in the no summary group. Participants given the lay summary were as concerned about the use of animals for schizophrenia as for addiction research. APQ ratings otherwise indicated more concern for animals used for addiction research (and for obesity compared to cardiovascular disease in all summary groups). Therefore, the information provided by a research project summary influenced attitudes to use of animals in biomedical research. However, there was no overall increase in agreement with animal use in either of the summary groups. Public Library of Science 2023-08-18 /pmc/articles/PMC10437917/ /pubmed/37594971 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0290232 Text en © 2023 Cassaday et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Cassaday, Helen J.
Cavenagh, Lucy
Aluthgamage, Hiruni
Crooks, Aoife
Bonardi, Charlotte
Stevenson, Carl W.
Waite, Lauren
Muir, Charlotte
Attitudes to the use of animals in biomedical research: Effects of stigma and selected research project summaries
title Attitudes to the use of animals in biomedical research: Effects of stigma and selected research project summaries
title_full Attitudes to the use of animals in biomedical research: Effects of stigma and selected research project summaries
title_fullStr Attitudes to the use of animals in biomedical research: Effects of stigma and selected research project summaries
title_full_unstemmed Attitudes to the use of animals in biomedical research: Effects of stigma and selected research project summaries
title_short Attitudes to the use of animals in biomedical research: Effects of stigma and selected research project summaries
title_sort attitudes to the use of animals in biomedical research: effects of stigma and selected research project summaries
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10437917/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37594971
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0290232
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