Dataset Information

Children's attitudes towards animals are similar across suburban, exurban, and rural areas.

ABSTRACT: The decline in the number of hours Americans spend outdoors, exacerbated by urbanization, has affected people's familiarity with local wildlife. This is concerning to conservationists, as people tend to care about and invest in what they know. Children represent the future supporters of conservation, such that their knowledge about and feelings toward wildlife have the potential to influence conservation for many years to come. Yet, little research has been conducted on children's attitudes toward wildlife, particularly across zones of urbanization. We surveyed 2,759 4-8th grade children across 22 suburban, exurban, and rural schools in North Carolina to determine their attitudes toward local, domestic, and exotic animals. We predicted that children who live in rural or exurban areas, where they may have more direct access to more wildlife species, would list more local animals as "liked" and fewer as "scary" compared to children in suburban areas. However, children, regardless of where they lived, provided mostly non-native mammals for open-ended responses, and were more likely to list local animals as scary than as liked. We found urbanization to have little effect on the number of local animals children listed, and the rankings of "liked" animals were correlated across zones of urbanization. Promising for conservation was that half of the top "liked" animals included species or taxonomic groups containing threatened or endangered species. Despite different levels of urbanization, children had either an unfamiliarity with and/or low preference for local animals, suggesting that a disconnect between children and local biodiversity is already well-established, even in more rural areas where many wildlife species can be found.

SUBMITTER: Schuttler SG

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6659664 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Children's attitudes towards animals are similar across suburban, exurban, and rural areas.

Schuttler Stephanie G SG Stevenson Kathryn K Kays Roland R Dunn Robert R RR

PeerJ 20190723

The decline in the number of hours Americans spend outdoors, exacerbated by urbanization, has affected people's familiarity with local wildlife. This is concerning to conservationists, as people tend to care about and invest in what they know. Children represent the future supporters of conservation, such that their knowledge about and feelings toward wildlife have the potential to influence conservation for many years to come. Yet, little research has been conducted on children's attitudes towa ...[more]

PMID: 31372320

Similar Datasets

Project description:ObjectivesThis study examines whether there is a difference between urban versus suburban and rural adolescents in their use of health services following two types of self-harm distinguished as self-harm with or without suicide intent.SettingA nationwide cross-sectional school survey of 11 406 Norwegian adolescents aged 13-19 years in 73 Norwegian junior and senior high schools.ParticipantsAdolescents who reported self-harm and provided valid responses to a follow-up question about having received subsequent help or treatment (n=959) were included in the study. Adolescents were divided into urban versus suburban and rural depending on: (1) the location of municipalities where they attended school and (2) the place of residence. Associations between urban versus suburban and rural areas and the use of health services following self-harm were assessed in those who self-harmed with and without suicide intent.Primary outcome measureUse of health services following self-harm.Results1 in 4 adolescents reported using health services following self-harm. Adolescents reporting self-harm with suicide intent were more likely to use health services than those who self-harmed without suicide intent. Following self-harm without suicide intent, adolescents in urban areas were four times more likely to use health services than adolescents in suburban and rural areas. There was no statistically significant area difference in the use of health services following self-harm with suicide intent.ConclusionsThis study found a geographical variation in the use of health services following self-harm without suicide intent, but not following self-harm with suicide intent. Differences in perception of self-harm and help-seeking behaviour between areas and different accessibility to services are suggested as possible explanations. There is a need to better understand how the interplay between individual characteristics and accessibility to services influences adolescents' use of health services following self-harm. We suggest that multilevel models are a valuable approach to achieve this goal.

Dataset Information

Children's attitudes towards animals are similar across suburban, exurban, and rural areas.

Publications

Children's attitudes towards animals are similar across suburban, exurban, and rural areas.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets