When targeting human behaviour change for animal welfare improvement, engaging with communities is vital. Equid-reliant communities are often resource poor, geographically isolated and disparities in literacy rates are common, presenting challenges to ‘traditional’ forms of engagement. Arts-based initiatives using non-written communication methods such as storytelling and performance, may be ideal media to convey positive welfare messages. In this study we evaluate the feasibility of using forum theatre to sensitise donkey-reliant communities regarding key welfare issues. Through a co-creation process, a piece of interactive forum theatre on donkey welfare was produced and staged for the public and in local schools. Post-performance questionnaire data were collected from adults and both pre- and post-performance data in schools to evaluate changes in knowledge and attitudes resulting from the performance. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected using Likert scales and open questions, respectively. Audience feedback was positive, with more than 90% of audiences strongly agreeing that they enjoyed the performance. More than 85% of adult respondents strongly agreed that the performance raised their awareness of three key indicators: donkey health needs; donkey welfare needs; and how much donkeys should carry. For youth audiences, comparison of pre- and post-performance measures demonstrated positive changes in the belief that donkeys feel pain, how much individuals liked donkeys and how confident they felt in identifying how a donkey was feeling. Although participatory arts-based approaches remain rare in the animal welfare sector, the study highlights the potential value of these methods in promoting community engagement for positive animal welfare changes.

The techniques employed to collect and store trematodes vary between research groups, and although these differences are sometimes necessitated by distinctions in the hosts examined, they are more commonly an artefact of instruction. As a general rule, we tend to follow what we were taught rather than explore new techniques. A major reason for this is that there are few technique papers in the published literature. Inspired by a collaborative workshop at the Trematodes 2024 symposium, we outline our techniques and processes for collecting adult trematodes from fishes and discuss the improvements we have made over 40 years of dissections of 20,000+ individual marine fishes. We present these techniques for two reasons: first, to encourage unified methods across the globe, with an aim to produce optimally comparable specimens across temporal periods, across geographic localities, and between research groups; and second, as a resource for inexperienced researchers. We stress the importance of understanding differences in host biology and the expected trematode fauna, which ultimately enables organised and productive dissections. We outline our dissection method for each key organ separately, discuss handling, fixation, and storage methods to generate the most uniform and comparable samples, and explore ethical considerations, issues of accurate host identification, and the importance and potential of clear record keeping.

We draw on a comprehensive dataset of metadata about journal articles substantively related to gender and politics published in 37 political science journals through the end of 2023, including Politics & Gender, to characterize and compare trends over time and the most prominent topics addressed by these journals. We show that the volume of work published by Politics & Gender has increased over time, has become increasingly quantitative in nature, and tends to focus on questions related to women running for political office and the nature of women’s political representation. These patterns closely reflect broader tendencies in the gender and politics research published by general-interest political science journals. Other journals dedicated to research on gender and politics tend to publish more qualitative research on topics including care work, the diffusion of equality norms, and conflict.

The objective of feminist institutionalist (FI) political science is to expose institutions that perpetuate gender inequalities. The nature of these entities and the best strategies for studying them remain hotly debated topics. Some scholars identify ethnography as a valuable methodology for FI research. However, novices to this methodology might need help navigating it. In this theory-generating article, we aim to bridge the gap between different approaches to FI and ethnographic methodologies. We propose ethnographic approaches suitable for scholars who see gendered institutions as real entities that constrain and enable human practices, as well as those who perceive them as sedimented clusters of meanings. We illustrate our arguments using a partially fictional empirical example, inspired by findings from our own ethnographic research. We hope that this article will promote increased engagement, both theoretical and empirical, with ethnography among FI scholars.

Quantifying the causal effects of race is one of the more controversial and consequential endeavors to have emerged from the causal revolution in the social sciences. The predominant view within the causal inference literature defines the effect of race as the effect of race perception and commonly equates this effect with “disparate treatment” racial discrimination. If these concepts are indeed equivalent, the stakes of these studies are incredibly high as they stand to establish or discredit claims of discrimination in courts, policymaking circles and public opinion. This paper interrogates the assumptions upon which this enterprise has been built. We ask: what is a perception of race, a perception of, exactly? Drawing on a rich tradition of work in critical race theory and social psychology on racial cognition, we argue that perception of race and perception of other decision-relevant features of an action situation are often co-constituted; hence, efforts to distinguish and separate these effects from each other are theoretically misguided. We conclude that empirical studies of discrimination must turn to defining what constitutes just treatment in light of the social differences that define race.

In many countries, the economics domain forms a routine part of health technology assessments (HTA) next to analyzing the comparative effectiveness and safety of a technology. The method applied most often is economic evaluation, such as cost-effectiveness analysis, which is supposed to support the efficient use of resources. In Austria, economic evaluation has played a negligible role in HTA and reimbursement decisions, even though the country faces the same public healthcare sustainability challenges as others. In this commentary, we argue that while health economics will need to play a more active role in HTA-related decision support to deal with those challenges, current approaches in other countries may have to be broadened to fit the Austrian context. We are outlining four arguments to underpin this perspective: First, economic evaluations (in their current form) are of limited benefit for supporting reimbursement decisions of new high-priced technologies. Second, a broader variety of health economic methods is needed to address the scope of technologies. Third, applying health economic methods requires a reflection on their underlying values. Finally, health economics within HTA needs to go beyond microeconomic analysis of interventions. We are suggesting several alternative methods and approaches, encouraging out-of-the-box thinking and experimenting with methods developed in the academic context but rarely applied in routine HTA. Although some of our topics are unique to Austria, others may equally apply to other healthcare systems. With our thoughts, we aim to stimulate discussions for further developing health economics within HTA in Austria and internationally.