Surveying The Extent of Demographic Reporting of Animal Participants in ACI Research

We present a review of demographic information collected and reported about animal research participants in Animal-Computer Interaction (ACI) research. Starting from the complete ACI proceedings of 161 publications from the conference beginnings in 2016 until 2023, we established a corpus of 79 publications involving live animal participants. Our aim was to paint a picture of who these animals are, what demographic data was collected about them, and how this data varied across different research contexts. Our analysis revealed 841 live animals represented in ACI research, encompassing 23 different types of animals across 10 research contexts. We observed differences in the demographic information correlating with the animals’ types and contexts. We argue that these differences might reflect biases about animals and could impact the interdisciplinary exchange of research findings. In particular, descriptors such as breed, species, and context-specific details were frequently reported, while aspects like personalities, life experiences, and social relationships were less consistently documented, and only in some specific contexts. We discuss the implications of these findings for research validity, reproducibility, and ethical considerations within ACI, proposing recommendations for more consistent and comprehensive reporting practices. This work aims to enhance our understanding of animal participants in ACI research and advance efforts towards equitable and ethical interspecies relationships through technology.