Exploring lay perceptions of the causes of crib‐biting/windsucking behaviour in horses

Abstract

Qualitative approaches to health, disease and behaviour have an important role in the medical field and are applicable to veterinary research.

A review of approaches to assessing equine welfare

“…The role that qualitative methods can play in veterinary research is gaining recognition (Christley and Perkins ; Litva et al . ) and the increasing use of positive welfare indicators (Yeates and Main ), instead of, or alongside, indicators of negative welfare, provide new avenues that may contribute to the development of new, holistic, equine welfare assessment protocols.…”

“…assessment still has a great deal to learn from the assessment protocols developed and used in other species, including production animals (Whay et al 2003) and dogs (Walker et al 2009), as well as those developed and used to assess welfare in working equine populations (Pritchard et al 2005). The role that qualitative methods can play in veterinary research is gaining recognition (Christley and Perkins 2010;Litva et al 2010) and the increasing use of positive welfare indicators (Yeates and Main 2008), instead of, or alongside, indicators of negative welfare, provide new avenues that may contribute to the development of new, holistic, equine welfare assessment protocols.…”

Researching hard to reach areas of knowledge: Qualitative research in veterinary science

“…We see them as highly complementary to more commonly used quantitative approaches. The paper by Litva et al (2010) in this issue provides a useful introduction to some aspects of qualitative research.…”

“…In this issue, Litva et al. (2010) use qualitative research to investigate horse owner perceptions of the causes of crib‐biting/windsucking.…”

“…In this issue, Litva et al (2010) use qualitative research to investigate horse owner perceptions of the causes of crib-biting/ windsucking. While this may be one of the few papers published in EVJ explicitly and overtly to use qualitative methods there is no doubt that much research published in EVJ has, to some extent, utilised such methods.…”