The attitudes of university students towards animal testing

Abstract

Animal research has been carried out for many decades. It was relatively recently that it became a hotly contested issue. The price that animals have had to pay for our scientific advancements has been questioned more and more in recent decades and substantive research has gone into understanding whether animal testing is justified. Although much exploration has been conducted with regards to people’s attitudes towards general animal testing away from our shores, very little has been done in Malta. Research in Malta was mostly about attitudes towards animal testing within the context of cosmetics and consumer behaviour. This quantitative study was done with the aim to address this gap in the Maltese literature. This study will investigate what are the attitudes that University of Malta students have regarding animal testing and to explore whether there are associations between these attitudes and participant’s age, sex and the faculty in which they are carrying out their studies. Data collected through a self-reporting questionnaire, which measured multiple scenarios of animal testing, and statistical analyses found that the participants had an overall negative attitude towards animal tests, especially those involving pain. Furthermore, it was found that there were no significant associations with age or the faculty where the participants studied. It was only sex that had any meaningful difference, with females having more negative attitudes than males.