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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Lucy Asher
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
© 2016 Caron-Lormier et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. In a resource-limited world, organisations attempting to reduce the impact of health or behaviour issues need to choose carefully how to allocate resources for the highest overall impact. However, such choices may not always be obvious. Which has the biggest impact? A large change to a small number of individuals, or a small change to a large number of individuals? The challenge is identifying the issues that have the greatest impact on the population so potential interventions can be prioritised. We addressed this by developing a score to quantify the impact of health conditions and behaviour problems in a population of working guide dogs using data from Guide Dogs, UK. The cumulative incidence of different issues was combined with information about their impact, in terms of reduction in working life, to create a work score. The work score was created at population-level to illustrate issues with the greatest impact on the population and to understand contributions of breeds or crossbreeds to the workforce. An individual work deficit score was also created and means of this score used to illustrate the impact on working life within a subgroup of the population such as a breed, or crossbreed generation. The work deficit scores showed that those removed for behavioural issues had a greater impact on the overall workforce than those removed for health reasons. Additionally trends over time illustrated the positive influence of interventions Guide Dogs have made to improve their workforce. Information highlighted by these scores is pertinent to the effort of Guide Dogs to ensure partnerships are lasting. Recognising that the scores developed here could be transferable to a wide variety of contexts and species, most notably human work force decisions; we discuss possible uses and adaptations such as reduction in lifespan, quality of life and yield in production animals.
Author(s): Caron-Lormier G, Harvey ND, England GCW, Asher L
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: PLoS ONE
Year: 2016
Volume: 11
Issue: 11
Online publication date: 09/11/2016
Acceptance date: 11/10/2016
Date deposited: 04/04/2017
ISSN (electronic): 1932-6203
Publisher: Public Library of Science
URL: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0165414
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0165414
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