to their beliefs to produce a desired outcome. Other studies
have examined the perceptions of veterinarians’
[11]. [11] showed how veterinarians’ motivations and
decisions about medical treatment affected the quality of
data recorded from the herd. Veterinarians’ focus on
specific problems influenced their motivation to collect
data and this may have introduced variation and bias
into the data.
Other studies have—more explicitly—combined the
managerial and the biological perspective. [12] focused
on farmers’ time planning and structure of everyday
activities as keys to understanding and solving problems
related to calf disease and mortality. Whether the manager
had a basic belief that calf mortality was a permanent
crisis that had to be expected to be present on a
dairy farm affected calf mortality in the herd. Previous
experience in solving disease and mortality problems in
calves had a strong positive influence on this belief.
Furthermore, [13] reported that farmers’ normative
frame of reference about mastitis explain variation in
herd level somatic cell count and their perceptions of
the control of mastitis. Thus, farmers’ perceptions about
mastitis control explained the variation in clinical mastitis.
The study concludes that farmers’ self-reported
behaviour explain and predict differences in mastitis
incidence between farms. Consequently, future research
should take into account not only farmers’ behaviour
but also farmers’ attitudes and how these may direct
their perceptions and actions.
Some studies also point to the importance of combining
various methodological approaches (e.g., [14]). [14]
proposed that research in health management using
solely a quantitative approach may present major challenges
to the interpretation of the results, because the
humans involved may respond to their observations
based on previous experiences and their own beliefs.
They concluded that drawing conclusions from quantitative
studies that show associations between specific
herd health management routines and disease outcome
may benefit greatly by adding a qualitative perspective
to the quantitative approach to reduce response bias.
Results from an on-going project seem to support the
importance of using different methods as advocated by
[14]. Preliminary analysis from this project shows a positive
effect of the farmer being proactive in their problem
solving and herd fertility. Proactive problem solving
implies a preference to look for problems and to keep
control of the situation, instead of giving up control and
wait for problems to emerge on their own [15]. However,
what strikes us as important from the latter project
is not only the value of combining the managerial
(proactive problem solving) and biological (herd fertility)
perspectives, but the power of the methodological
approach. The use of a semi-structured interview could