Dr Richard Parker

Summary

Statistics; Education; Experimental design; Epidemiology; Animal behaviour & welfare

I am intersted in the development of new methods to teach and apply quantitative skills and knowledge, and I currently work on an ESRC-funded project investigating the use of interactive electronic-books in the teaching and application of modern quantitative methods in the social science.

My background is in biology and psychology, and the areas they intersect, such as animal behaviour & welfare.

Biography

I completed my BBSRC-funded PhD in 2008 on ‘Cognitive Bias as an Indicator of Emotional State in Animals’, supervised by Mike Mendl and Liz Paul in the Animal Welfare and Behaviour (AWB) research group in the University of Bristol's School of Veterinary Sciences.

Since then, I have worked on a variety of research projects (with the most recent first):

• The use of interactive electronic-books in the teaching and application of modern quantitative methods in the social science, an ESRC-funded project running until 2016.
• e-Stat project, developing statistical software for complex statistical models (ESRC), with Bill Browne;
• The efficacy of a participatory-based intervention as a means of reducing lameness, and improving other aspects of health and welfare, in working horses and donkeys in India and Pakistan (The Brooke), with Becky Whay, Joy Pritchard and Christine Reix;
• Effect of breed on the welfare and productivity of cattle and goats on small holdings in East Africa (Send a Cow), with Becky Whay;
• Developing a behavioural test to predict future tail-biting in pigs (EU Welfare Quality), with Mike Mendl and Poppy Statham;
• Identifying risk factors for tail-biting in pigs (BPEX), with David Main, Nina Taylor, Mike Mendl and Sandra Edwards;
• Sample Size, Identifiability and MCMC Efficiency in Complex Random Effect Models (ESRC): with Bill Browne.

Prior to my PhD, I read Psychology and Zoology (BSc) Joint Honours at the University of Bristol, and then spent time travelling in Australia and New Zealand, working on farms, factories, and as a Field Assistant at the Department of Zoology, University of Melbourne. Back in the UK, I worked as a Research Assistant in the Psychological Medicine Research Group at the University of Manchester, and also at the Division of Psychology at the University of Northumbria.

Keywords

• Statistics
• Education
• Multi-level analysis
• Epidemiology
• Experimental design
• Animal behaviour
• Animal welfare
• Cognition
• Emotion

Skills

• Royal Statistical Society
• British Psychological Society
• Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour

Expertise

I am a member of the Animal Welfare and Behaviour research group. I am interested in the welfare of working horses and donkeys in India and Pakistan and the welfare and productivity of cattle and goats in East Africa, including differences by breed and the factors pre-disposing pigs to developing tail-biting. I'm aslo interested in the analysis of multi-level data, including sample size calculations. Finally, I conduct research on cognition and consciousness in animals (human and non-human), including emotion-related changes in cognitive processes.

Memberships

Organisations

Farm Animal Science

Other sites

• Cmm
• Education

Recent publications

• Michaelides, DT, Parker, RMA, Charlton, CMJ, Browne, WJ & Moreau, L, 2016, ‘Intermediate notation for provenance and workflow reproducibility’. in: Marta Mattoso, Boris Glavic (eds) Provenance and Annotation of Data and Processes: 6th International Provenance and Annotation Workshop, IPAW 2016, McLean, VA, USA, June 7-8, 2016, Proceedings. Springer Verlag, pp. 83-94
• Hothersall, B, Caplen, GJ, Parker, RMA, Nicol, CJ, Waterman-Pearson, AE, Weeks, CA & Murrell, JC, 2016, ‘Effects of carprofen, meloxicam and butorphanol on broiler chickens’ performance in mobility tests’. Animal Welfare, vol 25., pp. 55-67
• Zhang, Z, Parker, R, Charlton, C, Leckie, G & Browne, W, 2016, ‘R2MLwiN: A program to run the MLwiN multilevel modelling software from within R’. Journal of Statistical Software, vol 72.
• Browne, W, Parker, R, Charlton, C, Michaelides, D & Moreau, L, 2016, ‘Stat-JR LEAF Workflow Guide (1.0.4 Beta Release)’. Centre for Multilevel Modelling, University of Bristol
• Reix, CE, Dikshit, AK, Hockenhull, JS, Parker, RMA, Banerjee, A, Burn, CC, Pritchard, JC & Whay, HR, 2015, ‘A two-year participatory intervention project with owners to reduce lameness and limb abnormalities in working horses in Jaipur, India’. PLoS ONE, vol 10.
• Whay, HR, Dikshit, AK, Hockenhull, JS, Parker, RMA, Banerjee, A, Hughes, SI, Pritchard, JC & Reix, CE, 2015, ‘Evaluation of changes in equine care and limb-related abnormalities in working horses in Jaipur, India, as part of a two year participatory intervention study’. PLoS ONE, vol 10.
• Caplen, G, Hothersall, B, Nicol, CJ, Parker, RMA, Waterman-Pearson, AE, Weeks, CA & Murrell, JC, 2014, ‘Lameness is consistently better at predicting broiler chicken performance in mobility tests than other broiler characteristics’. Animal Welfare, vol 23., pp. 179-187
• Parker, RMA, Paul, ES, Burman, OHP, Browne, WJ & Mendl, M, 2014, ‘Housing conditions affect rat responses to two types of ambiguity in a reward-reward discrimination cognitive bias task’. Behavioural Brain Research, vol 274., pp. 73-83
• Hothersall, B, Caplen, G, Parker, RMA, Nicol, CJ, Waterman-Pearson, AE, Weeks, CA & Murrell, JC, 2014, ‘Thermal nociceptive threshold testing detects altered sensory processing in broiler chickens with spontaneous lameness’. PLoS ONE, vol 9., pp. e97883
• Parker, RMA & Browne, WJ, 2014, ‘The place of Experimental Design and Statistics in the 3Rs’. ILAR Journal, vol 55., pp. 477-485

View complete publications list in the University of Bristol publications system