ACER Consulting Ltd., Guelph, ON, Canada N1G 5L3; Department of Population Medicine, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, Canada N1G 2W1.
ACER Consulting Ltd., Guelph, ON, Canada N1G 5L3.
J Dairy Sci. 2020 Dec;103(12):12128-12139. doi: 10.3168/jds.2020-19039. Epub 2020 Oct 23.
The objective of this study was to determine communication preferences of dairy producers in Canada. A secondary objective was to evaluate social media engagement of dairy producers. A survey was administered to Canadian dairy producers between March and April, 2015 to collect information on current management practices on their farms. A total of 1,373 Canadian dairy producers responded to the survey, representing a response rate of 12%. The survey consisted of 192 questions; however, only questions regarding producer demographics, importance of information sources, and internet and social media use were evaluated in this study. The primary outcome variables of interest included use of the internet to access dairy information, importance of different sources of information about dairy herd health and management, and use of online search engines and social media platforms. For each outcome, logistic regression analyses were used to investigate associations between the outcome and demographic variables. Veterinarians were viewed as a "very important" source of information by the majority of respondents (79%), whereas milk recording and dairy producer organizations were viewed as a "very important" source of information by 36% of respondents. Other producers (46%) and magazines or newspapers (51%) were commonly viewed as an "important" source of information. Online search engines were commonly used by respondents (94%). Social media was viewed as less important, and had mixed levels of use. YouTube (70%), Facebook (63%), and Twitter (18%) were the most commonly used social media platforms. Eighty percent of Twitter users reported using the platform to interact with and obtain or share information about herd health management online, which was the highest reported interactivy regarding herd health among all social media platforms. This exploratory study offers insight into the communication preferences of Canadian dairy producers and can be used to facilitate future communication strategies aimed at engaging rural farming audiences across Canada.
本研究旨在确定加拿大奶农的沟通偏好。次要目标是评估奶农的社交媒体参与度。2015 年 3 月至 4 月期间，对加拿大奶农进行了一项调查，以收集其农场当前管理实践的信息。共有 1373 名加拿大奶农对该调查做出了回应，回应率为 12%。该调查共包含 192 个问题；然而，本研究仅评估了关于生产者人口统计数据、信息来源重要性以及互联网和社交媒体使用的问题。主要的研究结果变量包括使用互联网获取奶业信息、不同来源对奶牛群健康和管理信息的重要性，以及使用在线搜索引擎和社交媒体平台。对于每个结果，使用逻辑回归分析来调查结果与人口统计学变量之间的关联。大多数受访者（79%）认为兽医是“非常重要”的信息来源，而牛奶记录和奶农组织被 36%的受访者视为“非常重要”的信息来源。其他生产者（46%）和杂志或报纸（51%）通常被视为“重要”的信息来源。在线搜索引擎也被受访者广泛使用（94%）。社交媒体的重要性较低，使用程度参差不齐。YouTube（70%）、Facebook（63%）和 Twitter（18%）是最常用的社交媒体平台。80%的 Twitter 用户报告称使用该平台与在线的奶牛群健康管理进行互动，并获取或分享信息，这是所有社交媒体平台中报告的最高奶牛群健康互动率。这项探索性研究深入了解了加拿大奶农的沟通偏好，可以用于促进未来旨在吸引加拿大农村农业受众的沟通策略。
