​Appendix A

Three primary research approaches have been employed to expand on, or supplement, the secondary material. This reflects a commitment to mixed-methods research, as advocated by Weishaar et al. (2014), to understand complex social phenomena. This does come at the cost of eclecticism. These methods are summarised below.

The primary research method was the use of in-depth semi-structured interviews. Undertaken during 2013–2014, 60 interviews were completed, the majority of which were conducted face to face (a list of interviewees is provided following the reference list). Each interview lasted, on average, one hour, and was transcribed. One of the interviews comprised eight participants in a focused discussion. The majority of interviewees were purposively sampled as informants about the policy-making process in their respective jurisdiction, geographic area, industry or field. Some difficulties presented themselves in the recruitment process, leading to under-representation of government ministers, and of executives from certain animal industries. Where possible this gap has been addressed using additional sampling, but it remains the key limitation of the primary method employed; this is a known problem in political science, and can lead to a reliance on retired ministers and their associates to infer and triangulate.

While this volume includes a discussion of direct action and illegal activities, the collection of any information related to criminality was explicitly excluded from the research methodology for this project. Discussion of these topics in this volume is limited to secondary data sources and literatures.

Throughout the book, interview responses have been used as direct evidence about behaviour, policy-making and processes. Where appropriate and with permission, direct quotations from interviewees have been included to enliven the text. In addition, interview evidence was combined with survey data from NGOs (see below) to map out the policy domain and to create an expanded edge list (that is, a graph of relationships between organisational actors). This permitted the use of social network analysis to understand and describe interactions between policy process participants and activists. This analysis was produced using the open-source Gephi analysis package (http://gephi.github.io/).

Three content analyses were undertaken:

• A systematic analysis of newspaper articles from 2005 through 2014. Drawing on material sampled from the ProQuest database of Australian newspaper articles, one in ten articles from this ten-year period was randomly sampled for analysis (n = 657).1 Manifest coding of article content was undertaken using the Nvivo qualitative analysis package.
• An analysis of free-to-air television content was undertaken in 2015 to identify the extent of, and different kinds of, representations of animals on Australian television screens. Nineteen hours of content were assessed. This comprised:
  • A baseline survey. Using a sample of peak viewing periods (7–10pm; Nielsen 2011), each of the major networks primary channels (ABC1, SBS1, 7, 9, 10) was assessed against a manifest and latent coding frame, and;
  • Deliberate sampling of the representation of non-mainstream diets on popular cooking television programs. Content was analysed descriptively, looking at narrative treatments of these diets.
• An analysis of the representation of animals and farming on Australian supermarket shelves was undertaken in 2015. Using a major national supermarket chain, visible (that is, customer-facing) packaging of dry goods and refrigerated products was systematically inspected and analysed to examine the representation of animals, farms and farmers. Of the total store content, 195 items were identified for analysis.

Three surveys were conducted as part of the research for this book:

• In late 2013 a survey of non-government organisations (NGOs) concerned with animal protection was conducted. Following the construction of a mailing list of 126 organisations, 50 responses were received (39.7 percent) and subject to analysis. This mailing list included all identifiable organisations at the time, including advocacy, service-provision and mixed organisations across Australia. The survey instrument included 14 open and closed questions.
• In 2014 a survey of animal-welfare officers associated with university research institutions was undertaken. From a mailing list of 39 individuals, 18 responses were received (46.1 percent) and subject to analysis. The survey instrument included 22 open and closed questions and was based on a modified version of the instrument employed by van Luijk et al. (2013).
• In 2015 a survey of protest participants was conducted at the Ban Live Export National Rally organised by Animals Australia in Sydney. The estimated attendance at the rally was 650 individuals; 350 survey requests were distributed and 57 responses received (representing approximately 8.8 percent of attendants, and a response rate of 16.3 percent). The survey instrument included 18 open and closed questions and was identical to that used in a wider research project of street protest participants as part of ongoing research (see: Jackson and Chen 2015).