Research collaborations
The app collects anonymous data on animals’ life-worlds but also on how they are reported by the guardians of different species and the same species in different contexts. Data collected using the Mellorater are gathered under the approval of the University of New England Human Research Ethics Committee (Approval number HE22-136). These data will reveal how areas for improvement in animal welfare are distributed differently according to the animal species, and the context and purpose for which they are being kept.
The uptake of the Mellorater by carers of animals undergoing an intervention study may facilitate comparison of various putative animal welfare initiatives.
It is anticipated that feedback from the current users of the Mellorater will reveal species-specific differences in observations. These data will facilitate refinements that ensure that any species-dependent tendencies of owners will be reflected in weightings that are assigned to each of the current statements that owners are asked to reflect upon.
Limitations:
Mellorater is not a welfare measuring tool. Instead, it is an attention-focusing checklist that prompts the user to reflect on a broad range of aspects within the physical and behavioural domains of their animal’s life-world (umwelt). Importantly, it does not set thresholds of what is or is not acceptable welfare. Instead, being species-agnostic, it is designed to help the user identify what is going well and highlight potential areas of risk or compromise, the aim being to stimulate further inquiry and prompt animal guardians to conceive opportunities for welfare enhancement.
The app is not currently designed to generate scores that can be aggregated into a single overall welfare score. The primary reason for this is that the weighting assigned to the different domains is currently unknown and must differ with each species because of the diverse evolved characteristics (telos). Currently, attempts to apply scores to each of the four physical domains cannot be justified. Mellorater app users are advised to be careful not to assume that each domain is as impactful on quality-of-life as the next.
Mellorater is not proposed as a validated welfare auditing tool because it relies on self-reporting and, as such, is vulnerable to the user’s subjectivity.
Opportunities:
By selecting and applying species-specific and validated indicators, Mellorater can be used by specialist auditors, however, we make no representations about its accuracy. If user’s subjectivity is stable over time, then the longitudinal data that the app generates may be considered useful proxies for trends in quality-of-life.
