Hoppers - Rabbit Survey Please Help!

Hi all, last year I was contacted by a student doing her Phd specialising in bunnies, from our local agricultural university, Risholme. She has recently contacted me again and has asked for the help of you Hoppers with her Phd. Her aim is to look "at the management of pet rabbits with
regards to owner knowledge, motivation and animal welfare". Her email states :

"I have written below more information about my study to give you some background.

As I'm sure your aware, there has been little scientific research on pet rabbits and the requirements of ownership are therefore more vague than for laboratory rabbits or farm rabbits. There are however guidelines/recommendations and advice from various organisations, but these in themselves can differ and it is unclear as to the extent that these are followed by pet owners. What I am aiming to do is to firstly investigate general details such as who keeps rabbits? Why do people keep them? What do they do with them? And then more in depth look at what brings about the decisions that owners make about the various aspects of management, and whether this differs from country to country?

The way that I intend to do this is firstly through this questionnaire, to establish general information on rabbit ownership. The questionnaires are aimed at owners of 1-6 rabbits and owners of 7+ rabbits, with both
questionnaires looking at; owner details, rabbit details, housing, dietary requirements, health and behaviour.

This is a long term study and thus the results will not be available for awhile but will hopefully provide information as to the motivations of rabbt owners and the way education can directed with this in mind.
Aswell as having the overall aim to improve rabbit welfare. When the study is complete the link to the questionnaire would become a link to the results. I am happy to answer any questions or concerns that you have and can send you further information if you are interested.
I hope that this may be of interest to you and I'm happy to give you more information if your interested."

I think that this would be a great thing for us to get involved in and could have a long term benefit for rabbits in the future. I would really appreciate it if as many of you as possible would help out? The ladies name is Jessica Hardiman and the link to her survey is www.rabbitsurvey.com. She states:

" It will take around 20 minutes to complete, as it is very comprehensive so can seem long but it is needed for me to explore things in more depth. If people feel they don't have the time, they can just fill in the required fields, which is still useful, obviously the more that is filled in the better though. If you want to put my email address with it, anyone who would prefer to fill out by hand can email me and I will send one out to them. Thanks again for your help".

I've done this - although i do wonder why a postcode is required.

I think it is to map regional rabbit owning and knowledge. Just a guess though.

Ah, ok. Thanks.

I did think some of the answer options were a little awkward for example the 'how often do you take your pet to the vet' didnt let me answer properly - i take them as and when and again at vaccs time but i think i had to answer something a bit vague which sounded like i only ever take them if they really need it

And it didnt give a 'feedback' section where you can make these comments to the person running the survey.

Apart from that, i hope they get good stuff.

She has given me her email and said I can pass it on, would you like to email her? It might help?

It might just be me being picky though because i design questionnaires in my job.

All done. Hope it is helpful.

Grin wrote:It might just be me being picky though because i design questionnaires in my job.

I done it, Dont like the post code thing as although its secure there is a lot of rabbit theft around....Also once you type stuff in you cant correct it.

Does anyone want her email to let her know? Or to ask about the postcode thing?

Done mine too.

Postcode will be to geographically map the data and see if there are regional variations.

(I analyse data for my job!)

catswhiskers, please could I have her email so she can send me a questionnaire? Thank you

Boo I can't complete it because I don't live in the UK. It sounds really interesting.

done it x

Done! I liked the last question...On a scale of 1 to 10, how satisfied are you with your rabbit?....There should be a 10+....I know most of us on here would give our buns 20 outta 10

NSD there is an option to select which. Country u live in. U should be able to complete???

Yodaphine wrote:Done! I liked the last question...On a scale of 1 to 10, how satisfied are you with your rabbit?....There should be a 10+....I know most of us on here would give our buns 20 outta 10

I put 10 too haha, I was thinking there is no way my babies are getting less than that! They just behave how they were born to behave

Done it, it was really good, except the questions that have already been mentioned, I hope it provides some good research

[b]Dont like the bit about owning the rabbit I dont they own me

^^ too true Ruffin, too true

I did it anyway..even though I live out of the UK..they will just ignore it

I didn't understand several questions...but more for the way they were put. It almost sounded asking if I was bothered by the rabbit's behavior. They are animals with certain instincts...no reason for been upset or not accepting them. Pretty said they the rate the satisfaction for the bunny...it is not an object!

charyuop wrote:I did it anyway..even though I live out of the UK..they will just ignore it

I didn't understand several questions...but more for the way they were put. It almost sounded asking if I was bothered by the rabbit's behavior. They are animals with certain instincts...no reason for been upset or not accepting them. Pretty said they the rate the satisfaction for the bunny...it is not an object!

Yes you are right there were some strange things about the questions.

I think that they could do with a comments section to explain this.

^ ^ ^ Yeah I found that quite strange too....having to click on all the behaviours my bunny does, but they do all of them because that's what rabbits do :/...and rating them on satisfaction as a pet was odd...I don't know how I could rate them less than a ten, they are living things so they have their...imperfections shall we say .

I spoke to Anne about the survey on Saturday, she had a hand in compiling it, and said that the questions that we're finding odd are only odd to us because we know that bunny binky, for example, is not a behavioural or any other problem, but what the survey is trying to collate is how well rabbits are understood, and there are people out there who've taken their buns to a vet for binkying, so whilst a lot of the bits in that section are quite strange to us, they may not be to someone else

Jay wrote:I spoke to Anne about the survey on Saturday, she had a hand in compiling it, and said that the questions that we're finding odd are only odd to us because we know that bunny binky, for example, is not a behavioural or any other problem, but what the survey is trying to collate is how well rabbits are understood, and there are people out there who've taken their buns to a vet for binkying, so whilst a lot of the bits in that section are quite strange to us, they may not be to someone else

Ahh okay I see! Wow...people are silly Makes more sense now then thanks for informing us!