hi,
puppy development would depend hugely on breed, breeder, owner, breed, nutrition, training … blimey its wide open. i would imagine the best you’ll get is overlapping bandings (similar to child development) for example, from memory speech onset and walking for “an average child” is something like between 9 and 24mths. however, in reality the “average child” doesnt exist its just a construction.
also, if you tell people you are treating their data CONFIDENTIALLY you will not be able to tell anyone – not even your lecturers under many of the common ethical research guidelines. it is usual for data to be treated ANONYMOUSLY in projects such as this and that should be OK to get participants.
how are you planning your data analysis because from your brief i cant actually see what you’re going to learn except that “some puppies do some things all at different times” which isnt gonna give you alot to write about as you have too many uncontrolled variables and the data doesnt fit any statistical analysis, are you planning semi-structured or open-ended questions?
lastly, are you sending out all 3 Q’s at once because if not owners may miss the behaviours you want to ask about and people are notoriously poor at remembering stuff ! also how are you controlling for social desirability because i would expect this in the form of “my pup is the best/cleverest/etc…”
just my 2p worth as a research freak – good luck tho!
Claire x
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