Learning update of master degree

Based on the report of BBC news (2021.03), I found that the pet abandonment rate has increased during the epidemic. As a pet owner, I am very concerned about pet abandonment. After academic research, it is clear that pet abandonment The high-risk group of problems is sojourners. Sojourners (Temporary / freedom service / public facing, digital nomads, study abroad students, [high disposable income / low attachment to resident area) are more likely to abandon their pets due to the unstable living conditions , sojourners are a huge group(Jackson,2006). In order to solve the problem more realistically, I set the target group as the  international students who need mental support from pets but not sure if they can keep pets for long in the UK The design of intervention is based on stakeholders. A questionnaire survey. For the pet adoption organisation, I chose to conduct an interview with the agent. The agent l choose is the RSPCA the UK biggest official pet adoption agency which also offer pet foster service , I contacted the student union to propose a student group for pet abandonment and adoption.

Why pet abandonment is very important to me and to society. According to the research of Cusack, O (2014), pets have a positive impact on people’s mental health. Especially for people living alone, pets have a positive impact on people’s psychological problems It has a healing effect and can effectively reduce loneliness and increase pet owners’ sense of social participation. Despite this, compared to last year, the pet abandonment rate this year has increased by 53% (sky news, 2022, 04). Lancer, Darlene (May 17, 2016) proposed that abandoned pets will have emotional damage and will accompany them for a lifetime. In order to solve the problem of pet abandonment among international students and the psychological harm of abandoned pets, the reasons for abandonment, the screening suggestions before raising pets, and various Stakeholder joint research becomes especially important.

For different stakeholders, I designed different interventions to get the best solution in series. First, after going through the questionnaire and with the permission of the participants, I and two of them were studying abroad and had pet abandonment experience. First of all, you need to understand their background stories. Character a’s pet cat was abandoned by a friend who returned to China. He had raised pets for two years and faced the problem of high prices for bringing pets back to China due to the epidemic, so he decided to abandon pets and keep them. To another friend. Character b’s pet was purchased online when he first came to the UK, but he was ready to go to Australia for postgraduate studies after studying in the UK, because it was inconvenient to bring pets and he was not sure where it would develop in the future. I left the cat to my juniors. For these two “abandoners”, I sent them the adopter application form that the RSPCA provided me, assuming they were eligible for pet ownership before returning to pet ownership Criteria, including but not limited to permanent residence, source of income, and basic knowledge of pet ownership, etc. Unfortunately, none of them meet the basic criteria, which means they probably shouldn’t have pets. It is necessary to screen pet owners, which can reduce the pet abandonment rate in some aspects. Combined with the big data of the questionnaire, it can also be found that most international students do not have the basic conditions for raising pets.

The second intervention is that I contacted the school union and the local RSPCA organisation in London. I hope that the union will consider the selection of students who are willing to keep pets before the new students enter the school, and recommend the use of adoption instead of buying. Purchase, the adopter application form of RSPCA can be adjusted in more detail according to the situation of international students. For pets, the most important thing is a stable residence, including whether the apartment allows residents to keep pets, as well as a fee for pet care and pet repatriation Clear notice. In the previous questionnaire, I noticed that more than 95% of the participants believed that the pet protection law is also an important way to reduce pet abandonment. I also proposed to RSPCA that the pet protection law must be set before adoption or before pets Read the document. I am currently discussing a more effective cooperation plan with the Student Union and RSPCA. Due to the people who concerns about the pets may not met the adoption demands they have options to fostering pet and decide if keep pets or not. 

These two interventions include quantitative and qualitative research methods, with literature and big data as the cornerstone, and then in-depth research for specific stakeholders to try to find solutions or reduce the abandonment rate in the future. Questionnaire surveys, or interviews, etc. are not In a perfect methodology, data and answers may be untrue due to lack of professionalism, morality of participants, etc. Therefore, the combination of various research methods and the step-by-step attempt of intervention can predict the possible optimal solution.

To sum up, in the whole intervention process, the positive impact is that I have recognised many people who are willing to contribute to pet abandonment like me. They are not only professional adoption organisations, but also caring social people. . I felt a kind of inspiration to support me to continue to research and solve the problem of pet abandonment. Secondly, trying various research methods also allowed me to learn different combinations of skills. It was my first time to interview strangers, and also the first I made suggestions for the existing official platform. If the cooperation of the Federation of Students was promoted in the later stage, it would also be a huge process in my study career. During the research process, I not only learned about resource integration, but more importantly, I have the ability to think independently and critical thinking.

Independent thinking refers to the fact that I have only a simple idea and now I am about to solve problems. Except for the help of my supervisors, I am advancing the research process by myself. Critical thinking is also thanks to my supervisors for pointing me to thinking at different stages. Some holes in the question gave me more inspiration. The most critical thing I have met is the people who abandoned pet or may abandon pet will never use the form and  the best way to avoid this is change the target audience into the potential pet owner..

For me, learning edges is not the ability I already have, but the new ability I acquired during this project. For example, when Cecilia was my first tutor, I discovered the participants behind the data. Emotional expression, when I analysed the questionnaire data, I felt the different emotional data of those who were willing to keep pets and those who abandoned pets.

The interests of different stakeholders should be gradually analysed. For pet owners, or potential pet owners, they can think more deeply about their sense of responsibility and mission for pets, thereby deepening the bond between them and pets. For pet adoption organisations, this It is a kind of propaganda for the platform, and due to the continuous increase in the abandonment rate, most adoption organisations are already overloaded with work, reducing the abandonment rate and increasing the adoption rate can also help the adoption organisation return to normal operation. Said that this is a concern for the study abroad group, and students who do not keep pets should seek help from the school if they encounter psychological problems.

In the future, I hope to verify from the practical results of our school, whether the premise screening and suggestions can effectively reduce the pet abandonment rate of international students, and if it works, it should be promoted in various student federations in the UK. Reduce the abandonment rate and increase the adoption rate, so that pets and international students no longer face psychological problems.

Regarding the last question, the future implications for me may be that I will try to work with pets or study abroad groups. This project made me discover my interests and I realised that I have the courage to change the world. For adoption organisations and I think the school and so on may try to cooperate in the future. It is difficult for a group to make changes to the abandonment of pets. He needs the cooperation and help of all parties. The potential founder may be the government due to the increased abandonment rate will solved partly and international student mental problems will be improved as well.

Reference

Lancer, Darlene (May 17, 2016). “What is Emotional Abandonment?”. PsychCentral. Archived from the original on 2015-05-02.

Cusack, O., 2014. Pets and mental health. Routledge.

Jackson, J. (2006). Ethnographic pedagogy and evaluation in short-term study abroad. Languages for intercultural communication and education, 12, 134.

Simon Susen (2022) Reflections on the (Post-)Human Condition: Towards New Forms of Engagement with the World?, Social Epistemology, 36:1, 63-94, DOI: 10.1080/02691728.2021.1893859

Rhoades, H., Winetrobe, H. and Rice, E., 2015. Pet ownership among homeless youth: Associations with mental health, service utilization and housing status. Child Psychiatry & Human Development, 46(2), pp.237-244.

The questionnaire and interview include qualitative and quantitative methods, and there will be literature sorting and research in the whole process of the study. When I think of the rudiment of the solution to solve the abandonment rate, I will contact the managers of RSPCA and Facebook adoption group again to test the application or other further solutions to ensure its practicability in the future. There is no such kind a prefect way or intervention for my project but all different methodologies make the project more complete. In the future there will be more and more methods, attempts and even failures but there will also be a greater possibility to solve the pet abandonment problem .

However, in addition to the imperfection of the method, there are still many problems found in the process of research. The first is the type of solution.

At first, I thought of shooting a documentary about pet owners, people who abandoned their pets, potential pet owners who wanted pets and adoption agencies. However, I am not a professional director and the participants I am looking for cannot fully express their views At the first stage, I was still at a loss. At present, my initial idea is to make a small software for foreign students and migrant workers These include self-evaluation before raising pets, popularization of pet protection law, recommendation of pet insurance and cooperation with adoption agencies
Diana also gave me a wonderful suggestion to contact the student union for cooperation. For those students who study abroad and have no fixed long-term residence, they are still advised not to keep pets. It is obvious that the suggestion should be improved again. These are only preliminary ideas.

Finally, even if there is a certain solution, I realize that the problem of pet abandonment cannot be fundamentally solved. What I can do is to reduce or prevent the problem of pet abandonment to a certain extent and come up with a way to deal with the aftermath Even if some pets are abandoned by their owners, there are ways to give them a better living environment

During these two months, I observed three types of stakeholders in different forms at the beginning of the study, I designed a questionnaire to investigate people aged 16 to 40 who have pets or are interested in pets. The questions include the age of the participants, their living status (living alone or settling down outside), various problems about pets and their views on pet abandonment and adoption The following is the detailed data of the questionnaire.

From this survey, it can be clearly seen that people are more likely to want pets when they are away from home , and most people have seen abandoned pets around them(Cusack, O., 2014). Part of the abandoned pets are transferred to friends for adoption The advantage of the questionnaire is that the participation of participants is low, and people are generally willing to spend a few minutes to answer more basic questions, which is very beneficial to the early data collection and analysis The questionnaire has great advantages in efficiency, objectivity, uniformity and universality.

However, the questionnaire has three fatal shortcomings.

First of all, the questionnaire lacks flexibility. Since the answers of the questionnaire are preset by me in advance, the answers will be limited and some more detailed and deeper information will be missed The second point is easy to be misunderstood. The questionnaires are usually freely answered by participants, which is prone to missing answers and misunderstanding The third and most important point is that the recovery rate and effective rate are low The recovery rate of questionnaires released through the Internet is often low, and many participants may not answer carefully, which will have a great negative impact on the survey sample.

After a series of basic reading, I began to look at the stakeholders of this project, mainly including potential pet owners who interested in pets, pet adoption agencies, pet abandoners, and the connection between pet adoption agencies and pet owners

After analysing stakeholders, I will launch a series of interactions to promote my research solutions.

However, during the conversation with Diana, I realized a mistake in my topic selection I chose pet abandonment as my research target because I was attracted by the rise of pet abandonment rate during the epidemic on BBC I should have set the time background of my research as the epidemic period.

However, for most countries in the world, the epidemic has became a past event. I should pay more attention to the future development trend. In April, I also set the target group as people who living alone, that is, sojourners. Now I will narrow the scope I hope to solve the problem of pet abandonment for adults who studying and working abroad, especially overseas students. Although the target population is a large group in which I also live, which may lead to a high sample repetition rate, according to my follow-up research, the incidence of pet abandonment is high among overseas students It is because there are foreign students around me that I can feel the problem in more detail and try to change it

My initial plan is to collect stories about pet abandonment, conduct a basic questionnaire survey on pet abandonment, and interview and discuss with professional pet adoption agencies.

What l have done:

1. Change my topic into “how to reduce the pet abandonment rate of people who living alone away from home”
2. Setting up the target audience group: 16-40 years old people who study abroad or work away from home.
3. Choose my intervention includes the methodology and stakeholders.

1.   

Phillipou, A., Tan, E.J., Toh, W.L., Van Rheenen, T.E., Meyer, D., Neill, E., Sumner, P.J. and Rossell, S.L., 2021. Pet ownership and mental health during COVID‐19 lockdown. Australian veterinary journal, 99(10), pp.423-426.

the epidemic not only affected humans and animals, but also caused a negative psychological impact on adults and children (Odriozola-González et al., 2020; Rothe et al., 2021; Saddik et al., 2021). In the past Research has shown that pets have a positive impact on people’s psychology, helping people achieve family resilience during times of stress. This article made me curious about the impact pets can have on people’s mental health.

The first thing to do is to determine the positive effects of pets on people’s mental health. I refer to Cusack’s book Pets and mental health. I will explain it later. Secondly, in times of crisis, the relationship between people and pets has the potential to be magnified – whether positive Still negative. For example, the effects of unemployment and resource scarcity during a pandemic may intersect significantly with pet ownership. The perception that companion animals may reduce loneliness may be driving the increase in pets, with some preliminary data suggesting that adoption rates have increased during the pandemic (Morgan et al. 2020). However, pet abandonment may be linked to pandemic-related economic stress, suggesting the need to explore pet ownership shifts in the context of mental health.

This article is based on the fact that I am raising pets myself, and it is my research on the relationship between the proportion of adopted pets and the proportion of abandoned pets and people’s mental health during the epidemic.

2. 

Cusack, O., 2014. Pets and mental health. Routledge.

this book presents the latest research and inspiring findings about the use of pets in mental health treatment. Reviews the historical basis for the use of pets in therapy and provides many examples of the outcomes of prescribing pets to disabled, lonely, incarcerated, and institutionalised individuals. The authors provide compelling evidence for the therapeutic value of animals in making us happier, healthier and more sociable. Although the terms human-animal bond and pet-promoting therapy are relatively new in the scientific literature, the concepts they encompass have been around for centuries. BACK-COVER COPY Research shows that animals promote humour, laughter, play and a sense of importance in people. Numerous examples show surprising results of prescribing pets to disabled, lonely, incarcerated and institutionalised people. Animal lover and author Odean Cusack provides compelling evidence that animals have therapeutic value in making us happier, healthier and more sociable.

However, this book was published in the 1990s, and it lacks some timeliness for the current epidemic era, but it can also strongly prove that pets have a positive psychological healing effect on people who are also lonely and face psychological problems during the epidemic.

3.

Ho, J., Hussain, S. and Sparagano, O., 2021. Did the COVID-19 pandemic spark a public interest in pet adoption?. Frontiers in Veterinary Science.

This is a study to determine whether global interest in pet adoption increased immediately after the WHO declared a pandemic, and whether the impact was sustainable eight months later. Conducted a Google Trends search using keywords related to pet adoption. The lowest and highest relative search volume (RSV) is scored between 0 and 100, respectively. The countries that contributed the most to this dataset include Australia, the United States, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Singapore, the Philippines, and Malaysia. From 2015 to 2020, RSV in the global pet, dog and cat adoption category peaked between April and May 2020 during the early epidemic phase of the pandemic. Compared to the same period in 2019, RSV rates for dog and cat adoptions (2020/2019) increased by up to 250%. Nonetheless, RSV in dog adoptions has been declining since July 2020, returning to the 5-year average by December 2020. In contrast, interest in cat adoption remains high. In conclusion, global interest in pet adoption surged in the early stages of the pandemic, but it was not sustainable. With the introduction of a COVID-19 vaccine, there are concerns that these newly adopted pets may be abandoned when they leave home for work in the future.

This article expresses the problem of pet abandonment after the pandemic. Most of the reasons come from people’s concerns about pets carrying viruses, as well as people’s pressures in life, and separation anxiety that pets will face when pet owners return to work after the epidemic.

Article I am interested

1.Parry NMA. COVID-19 and pets: when pandemic meets panic. Forensic Sci Int. (2020) 2:100090.

2.Irian M. COVID-19, your pet and other animals: are you at risk? Medic Rev. (2020) 22:81–2. doi: 10.37757/MR2020.V22

3.Vincent, A., Mamzer, H., Ng, Z. and Farkas, K.J., 2020. People and their pets in the times of the COVID-19 pandemic. Society Register, 4(3), pp.111-128.

Project report

When I saw the title “The Change I want to see”, I was very confused. I thought about a lot of things, such as the change in curriculum and the impact of aging. But there’s more to being inspired by what’s around you, and in my case, it’s my cat. According to BBC news in 2021, pet ownership rose by 47% in the wake of the outbreak, meaning more and more people have pets in recent years. According to sociologists, pets have a positive impact on people’s mental health, which partly explains the rise in pet sales during the pandemic. However, for first-time pet owners, Whether there is a software that can help them raise their pets better aroused my curiosity.

After such background investigation and combining with my own experience, I choose pet mobile phone software as the problem I want to change. Before starting, I investigated the existing pet apps with high usage and recommendation volume in the market. Petrescures by Home Again, an app that includes pet medical rescue and finding lost pets. Petparent, an online community of pet lovers and owners. Dogsync, an app that allows you to track your pet’s steps, eating habits, medical records and more. Neko Atsume, a virtual cat breeding app. These apps include pet training, virtual pets, pet rescue, pet diary and a host of other functions. These apps don’t have much in common, but target users are the same, pet owners and animal lovers.

Based on these existing apps, I conducted a basic questionnaire survey among 30 pet owners on their demand for pet apps. Pet owners pay more attention to pet health and pet derived services, such as pet grooming, pet training, pet funeral and so on. But the data were limited because all of the participants already owned pets. For an excellent pet app, a clear understanding of stakeholders can help me think more clearly. For an app, the most important thing is definitely the positioning of users, namely pet owners and animal lovers, and then app designers. Then comes the source of content in the app, such as pet supply factories, pet hospitals, pet service industry, etc. Finally, the brand IP is essential for all kinds of social shopping software.

It’s not easy to make an app that people like. The first one is the making and design of app. I have no professional knowledge in this field, and app making will be very limited. Secondly, the attraction of APP users. I need to know what kind of APP is lacking and needed by current users. And then the cooperation with all kinds of pet products, pet hospitals and so on. Finally, there is how the platform generates revenue. After communicating with my tutor, I am still confused about what should be included in this app. I have two ideas, one is an app about pet adoption and the follow-up after adoption, and the other is a super app that contains a series of pet raising knowledge, pet socialising and pet services. I will decide based on the practicalities of making the app and the data from the questionnaire I will carry out later to see what people really need. Before starting the questionnaire, I will analyse the existing pet apps and compare them with the pet data in recent years.

Update:

However, before researching, I should actually focus on the problem I want to solve, not the solution, and should not be limited to making an app. So I screened out two issues, namely, how to reduce the number of people adopting pets Abandonment problems of pets and the painful emotions after pets are abandoned.

Target audience:

· People who lives in Urban area
· People who live from their family
· Single means without full social connections
· Who is demographic

Stakeholders:

· RSPCA(the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) and we’ve been here for animals since 1824. We’re the world’s oldest and largest animal welfare charity, with the primary focus of rescuing, rehabilitating and rehoming or releasing animals across England and Wales.)

· People who are willing to adopt pets

What to do next

Identifying pre-existing data on abandonments rate before and after the pandemic

• Identifying a demographic that is mainly responsible for abandoning a pet (so what are the reasons why someone might not only decide to get a pet, but also abandon it)
• Is there a tool that will be able to prevent this problem from happening / educate people whether they’re ready to commit to a pet for years to come?

Reference

• Halbreich, E.D. and Mueller, M.K., 2022. Profiles of family pet ownership during the COVID-19 pandemic. Current Psychology, pp.1-5.
• Mueller, M. K., King, E. K., Callina, K., Dowling-Guyer, S., & McCobb, E. (2021). Demographic and contextual factors as moderators of the relationship between pet ownership and health. Health Psychology and Behavioral Medicine, 9(1), 701–723. https://doi.org/10.1080/21642850.2021.1963254
• Wells, D. L. (2019). The state of research on human–animal relations: Implications for human health. Anthrozoös, 32(2), 169–181. https://doi.org/10.1080/08927936.2019.1569902
• 2022. [online] Available at: <https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56362987> [Accessed 12 March 2021].

After reading the reference l have make a bibliography for understand the article and data clearly.

When I saw the question of this project, I was very confused. First of all, what is the uncertainty box? I have too many ideas about uncertain things, such as the field of future work, the mental health problems of studying abroad, etc.

Based on the spread of the epidemic and the combination of some online classes and offline classes adopted by the school at that time, we will encounter many problems during the process of online classes, such as network fluctuations, difficulties in listening, etc. I put the sense of time-space compression into my the indeterminate box.

First, we need to know when space-time compression, according to Marxist Thought (1993), refers to an idea that capital expansion causes changes in space-time properties and space-time relationships. It is rooted in Karl Marx’s theory that “space is annihilated by time”. Space-time compression is the result of technological innovations driven by the expansion of global capital that compress or eliminate distances in space and time, including communication technologies (telegraph, telephone , fax machines, the Internet) and travel technologies (railways, cars, trains, jets), driven by the need to overcome space barriers, open up new markets, speed up production cycles and reduce capital turnaround times.

In many cases, the sense of space-time compression is associated with globalisation. With the advancement of globalisation, the sense of space-time in the geographical sense will become weaker and weaker. For example, the birth of online courses has reduced the sense of space-time compression. You can take classes in the same “classroom” with your teacher anywhere in the world, and exchange ideas without barriers.

However, for online courses, the sense of time-space compression is fluctuating, that is, uncertain. First of all, there are still many differences between online classrooms and real classrooms. How can we guarantee that what we receive on the Internet at this moment? Is it correct and real-time news? Any network fluctuations and software problems will lead to fluctuations in time and space. Secondly, compared with offline education, the design of online courses lacks the experience and interactivity of topics. The survey shows that two weeks into the lockdown, 75% of students reported that their life had become more difficult and 50% felt that learning outcomes would be harder to achieve due to the sudden shift to online education. Twelve weeks into the lockdown, the corresponding numbers were 57% and 71%, respectively.

Students in Public Health Nutrition answered questionnaires two and 12 weeks (N = 79: response rate 20.3% and 26.6%, respectively) after the lockdown in Norway on 12 March 2020 and participated in digital focus group interviews in May 2020 (mixed methods study).

With the support of the data, I think that the sense of time-space compression of online courses during the epidemic is uncontrollable. However, I did not insist on this topic as my future topic. First of all, the sense of time-space compression is a theorem of physics and geography. Unable to fully penetrate this theorem, and I found a topic that I am more interested in and closer to my life.

Reference

Marx, Karl. Grundrisse. Penguin Classics, 1993. pp. 539.

Morley, D., 2005. Globalisation and cultural imperialism reconsidered. Media and cultural theory, pp.30-43.

Almendingen K, Morseth MS, Gjølstad E, Brevik A, Tørris C (2021) Student’s experiences with online teaching following COVID-19 lockdown: A mixed methods explorative study. PLoS ONE 16(8): e0250378. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0250378

Welcome to myblog.arts. This is your first post. 

 

I am Xueyu Li and if you want you can call me Emerald instead. 

Here is a place where a master student observes the world and tries to change it. This blog is to update my thoughts on the MA Applied Imagination in CSM. I hope everyone who reads it will not be stingy with their own evaluation.

 

 

“Overall, l know it seems like the world is crumbling out there, but it is actually a great time in your life to get a little crazy, follow your curiosity , and be ambitious about it. Don’t give up on your dreams. The world needs you all.”

Lawrence Edward Page