Research Memo 1!

Furry Friends Shouldn’t Be Abused!

Section 1 Hypothesis: How does animal abuse affect America? I believe that this issue needs more awareness and prevention. I predicted that everyone would agree would agree that animal abuse is a major issue in the United States and that we as citizens should prevent and help people learn about the topic. My survey incorporated ten questions, including the statement “According to the ASPCA there is a link between animal abuse and human abuse.” The option was to decide if the statement was true or false; it was true. Overall, I think this topic was the right choice for me!

Section 2 Context: My target audience was animal lovers. I would not want to target people that don’t like animals because they wouldn’t care about the issue. I chose these people to take my survey because they owned pets or they just like animals overall. I asked citizens before they took the survey if they liked animals. I think my results are valid and reliable because almost everyone agreed on the same questions and answered the same.  I don’t think any data was invalid questioning.

Section 3 Results: Figure 1 displays how many people were aware and think the United States should focus on this issue.

Questions:	How Citizens Responded:
Should we allow exotic pet trade?	Yes-1 No-24
Is exotic pet trade illegal?	Yes-22 No-3
Do you think Animal Abuse is a problem in South Carolina?	Yes-20 No-0 Not sure-5
Do you think Animal Abuse is a problem in the U.S?	Yes-22 No-1 Not sure-2

Section 4 Data Analysis: In my data I noticed three findings or patterns with all of the survey results. Most people did not know what exotic pet trade was until I verbally explained what it was but they all agreed that it should not be allowed in the U.S.  For example, exotic pet trade would include owning a tiger as a pet. Should that be allowed? No it shouldn’t because those types of animals should be in their natural habitat. The second finding from the information is everyone agreed that animal abuse needs more awareness in the U.S. and in South Carolina. My third finding was that everyone strongly agreed with “According to the ASPCA there is a link between animal abuse and human abuse.”  I was very surprised with these results because I did not expect people to know about the connection.

Section 5 Conclusion: In conclusion, most people or animal lovers agree that we need more awareness and that in order to prevent people from animal abuse we need to help citizens learn about the problem. I was correct; we need to educate more people about animal abuse in order to prevent these situations. I did not expect people to not like animals because when I first started the surveys I targeted everyone but after I realized that they did not care about animal abuse I targeted animal lovers.

Section 6 Follow Up: For research memo number two I would like to get more information on dog fighting in America. I have not changed my research question and will continue to find more information on animal abuse throughout America.