Can You Help With My Final University Dissertation Project?

CAN YOU HELP?

ARE YOU FREE ON SATURDAY 23RD AND SUNDAY 24TH NOVEMBER?

WANT TO GET INVOLVED IN SOME NEW RESEARCH?

GOT A HORSE THAT CAN JUMP 2FT6 AND IS OVER 14HH2?

THEN YOU CAN DEFINITELY HELP ME!

My name is Freya Hogan and I am a final year student at the University Of Lincoln studying Equine Sports Science.

For my final project I am investigating “The Effect Of Different School Surfaces On The Take Off And Landing Points In The Jumping Horse.”

I am looking for 3 or 4 more riders (though the more the better!) to come to some yards on the days mentioned above and give me a hand. All you would have to do would be to canter over a fence 5 times whilst I film you and measure the ground.

Sound simple? Then get involved!

Saturday 23rd November at 2:30pm at BILLZ EQUESTRIAN in Chobham, Surrey.
AND
Sunday 24th November at 10am at PARWOOD then on to WEYBRIDGE EQUESTRIAN CENTRE.

If you can help feel free to email me at freya@4xtra.com.

Unfortunately at the moment I can only provide limited transport from the Chobham and Chertsey area, so if you have a box and are willing to share give me a shout and I may try and pair you up with someone.

I'M PROVIDING FOOD :)

Thanks for your help everyone!

Ok I am reposting this here with some corrections. I general idea is that I need people to come to my three yards and jump. I film them, they get food as payment and then they can leave. Sound ok now? :)
 
Dear Frellie -

Not quite sure what happened to this thread. As a graduate in biology, I know how stressful final year can be, especially with the pressure of conducting and writing a dissertation, good luck!

I am afraid I won't be able to be involved with your experiment in the way that you have asked. Time and money are at a premium (as I expect it is with lots of other potential participants too!). I may be able to help in another way though. I am not quite sure how you are setting out your method, but you may be able to gather a better/larger data set if you asked people to send in a video of them jumping (with your specific requirements of height of fence, type of fence, distances etc) and with details of the surfaces that they are jumping on? I would be happy to do this if it would help.

Another idea is that you might be able to attend some large livery yards and ask them to oblige (as this won't involve travel/expense for the participants - and it is always useful to have someone to put up a jump for you!)?

Good luck with your research!
 
Hi Jessjc,

I like the idea about filming! The only reason I am having to use the same people is so that I can limit variable from using too many different horses. SO really I have had to limit my study far more than I wanted to but the way I intend to run this is a little bit like a pilot study. Using a small group of horses and riders, if I get some good data then my hope is to get some funding to expand the project.
 
Dear Frellie -

I don't quite understand; surely your variable factor is horse performance (and therefore horse subjects?), I can see that having multiple riders could be a factor which ideally you would like to keep the same but are unable to due to the nature of the experiment. But surely, the more data you have with as many different horses as you can have would enable you to identify the anomalies more easily and thus design an experiment with a more significant/useful set of data potentially?

Perhaps you could also ask for people to video their horses on consecutive days in the same conditions. I'm sure your project has the potential for being more sophisticated than a pilot study and really what the assessors want is that you have a project that requires advanced statistics/analysis in order to show that you are capable of strong undergraduate work. It will probably pay to refine your method more to get more out of it.

the other thing that you could do is to film a particular jump at several show centres with different surfaces. Then you would get loads of results in a short period of time. Although you would have to ask the organisers and make sure that the particular jump was in a location that would let you film it easily and also easily repeatable (ie a jump that is likely to exist similarly on a different course).

I would be interested to see what your research proposal looks like so far, as I don't think I am really getting it...
 
I'm not explaining my self very well here. This all started because I took my horse jumping on different surfaces and he behaved differently on each, sometimes he would leap around and throw himself at the fences and other times we were getting very close. My aim is to see how much of that change was due to the school surface.
The fact is every horse has a different stride length and way of jumping ect. So if I film one horse on five surfaces I know that the horse will always move in the same way and the change in take off and landing points are due to the school surface. But if I film a completely new set of horses on each surface then how do I know if the variation in take off/landing points that I am seeing is due to the surface. As I may get a set of horses on one surface that naturally take off far away and the next set naturally get deep to the fence so by using the same horses I can remove this variation
I hope that makes a little it more sense?
 
Perfectly clear to me now, Frellie, and I can always get the wrong of any stick!

Same horse/rider combinations at three different venues and on five different surfaces over the course of a single weekend.

Sorry I'm not available to help (too far away and don't jump anymore) but I think it's a very interesting idea for your dissertation, can you share your results back when you've written it up?
 
I see - that makes more sense. So you are asking for a set of people to jump their horse on several different surfaces... I missed the "AND" on your advert.

If you have 5 horses on two different surfaces doing 5 jumps, I suppose you get 25 videos on each surface to compare which is probably good enough to do some crude analysis. What parameters will you be assessing? (ie distance of take off/landing, shape over obstacle etc)

Re the show idea: in that case, you could contact a few people who go to all the shows in the area (there are usually some regular faces at each of the BS shows within a radius of 1-2hrs travel) and compare the same horses on different surfaces. Might be worth thinking about doing it this way if you don't get enough volunteers.

Good luck with it!
 
My advert isn't brilliantly clear on the background to the project so I don't mind questions :)

The film is actually my back up as the software isn't always accurate due to issues with scale.

I will be asking the riders to jump once, then wait for a seconds. In this time I will measure from the take off spot (front of the hoof mark) to the fence and then from the fence to the front of the landing hoof print. There is a 'perfect' distance that a horse should take off from and land at and the aim is to see how much this varies depending on the surface. I will them smooth the school over again and send the rider round again.
 
Lynds said:
The more I read this thread the crosser I feel. I do really think that a lack of emotional intelligence is more of a hinderence in life than poor spelling. As others have said there is spell check out there but clearly some people need to also turn on their 'tactful & polite' check too.
Click to expand...


Glad it wasnt just me! I couldnt even make it to the end before commenting, how people feel it ok to be down right OBNOXIOUS, to someone they know NOTHING about!!

And if you want to comment on my lack of grammar and 'shouting', I have 2 hands and 10 digits, 2 of them are for you :D

Welcome to the forum Frellie
Well done on making your last year, Ignore those who have nothing better than to put you down,
If my horse was in work Id have loved to have helped, however, I will be very interested in hearing the outcome, best of luck
 
Thank you Zero00000!

To everyone that has asked to see the results when they are done I will try and put something up here as soon as I have anything that will make any sense to anyone as I have a habit of using my own version of short hand when writing quickly :P
 
cptrayes said:
Can I translate for people finding her post hard to understand? She wants people who can get themselves to one of three specified equestrian centres on a specified day who are prepared to be filmed jumping a small jump, with the objective of measuring where the horse takes off and lands.

I'm being a bit thick, obviously, but I cannot see where she asks for a critique of her writing, or advice on how to manage her life after college.
Click to expand...

Agreed!
 
Have you thought about putting this advert up at local equestrian centres Frellie? That way you'll be targeting people in the right area and you might have more luck than here, where people are from all over. Just an idea :)
 
I have put it up at a few around the area. Mainly centres that I am using or have worked at. I have a few people that need to get back to me and if they don't then I will put it up in some more places. I have also now found the regional boards on here and added this to the correct one of those as well.
 
Frellie said:
I'm not explaining my self very well here. This all started because I took my horse jumping on different surfaces and he behaved differently on each, sometimes he would leap around and throw himself at the fences and other times we were getting very close. My aim is to see how much of that change was due to the school surface.
The fact is every horse has a different stride length and way of jumping ect. So if I film one horse on five surfaces I know that the horse will always move in the same way and the change in take off and landing points are due to the school surface. But if I film a completely new set of horses on each surface then how do I know if the variation in take off/landing points that I am seeing is due to the surface. As I may get a set of horses on one surface that naturally take off far away and the next set naturally get deep to the fence so by using the same horses I can remove this variation
I hope that makes a little it more sense?
Click to expand...


I'm not trying to knock you or your very interesting idea but surely there are more things than just the surface that leads to a horse taking off in a different place? The level and training of the horse, the same of the rider, familiarity of the fence to the horse, concentration of horse and rider, quality of the canter, fatigue, etc. These are just a few off the top of my head. Even more difficult to evaluate as they will be combinations that aren't necessarily known to you especially if you are unaccustomed to assessing horses and riders. Horses are not machines and don't always react in the same way from one day to the next. Good luck - I will be interested in your conclusions.
 
Yes there are heaps of variable that can effect this experiment. The one you have quoted above was just one that was questioned so I discussed how I attempting to control it. I have thought of ways of controlling pretty much all of the variable mentioned above but I think I would be here for quite a while if I explained them all but that's not saying that I won't if you want to hear how!
So far all the combinations of horses/riders I have are people that I know so I have an idea of how their horses will react and I have spent many years teaching and assessing riders so hopefully should be fine but the film is a backup so others can look if I am struggling.
 
Hello Frellie, wow, quite the welcome you got! English is not my first language so these sort of replies do make me spell check all my written stuff several times ;)
Really interesting subject and I will ask around for you as well.
Good luck and I too am looking forward to your findings. Will you be accounting for shod/unshod horses vs surface in your research?
 
Hi frellie :) sorry I can't offer to help you, but I'd be interested to hear the results of your research.

Zero00000 said:
And if you want to comment on my lack of grammar and 'shouting', I have 2 hands and 10 digits, 2 of them are for you :D
Click to expand...

Brilliant! :D

Can't believe the response the poor girl got. To those saying Microsoft word sorts grammar: actually, it doesn't. My housemate is a fifth year med student and I proofread her work for her sometimes. She struggles with "your, you're, their, there, they're" etc and word rarely picks up the mistake. But she absolutely loves her subject and is going to make a fantastic doctor because she is so enthusiastic. In fact, she's going to be a much better doctor than some kid who has excellent grammar but is only studying medicine because mummy and daddy are doctors.
 
The more research the better especially that you are doing it over small heights. In the past I wouldn't want to jump on slippery surface without studs but since jumping unshod horses I find them more sure footed. Admittedly I have never jumped an unshod horse higher than 1.30m. Hopefully there will be more and more research of this sort out there so owners can make informed decisions on horse management/hoof care and surfaces.
 
I'm not sure how much I will be able to include about the effect of shoes/no shoes but I think it would be well worth recommending to someone to do as a project next year.

That's the thing, the spell check doesn't see issues with the grammar or where I have typed so fast I have put you instead of your or a instead of and, and because of the dyslexia when I read back over my work I just can't see that I have made the mistake. So yea I make mistakes pretty often but I'm still doing a hell of a lot better than some people doing degrees (Or at least I would like to think I am :P)
 
Sorry, not able to help out, just wanted to wish you good luck, am I right in thinking this is an undergrad dissertation? If so, you've picked a pretty meaty topic, if you go on to do an MSc this has loads of scope to go further.

I work in a Uni library, definitely make use of the services they have on offer, even if it's someone to look over your references. We library bods are a helpful bunch, we like helping people, use us :) If you have an Academic Support department they should be more than happy to help with any grammar/spelling issues.

Edit, just nosying at your Uni library pages, I see they subscribe to Refworks, if you aren't familiar with this already, it may make your life much, much easier when it come to referencing. It takes a lot of the faffage and fiddly bits of referencing and sorts it out for you :) My students tend to like it a lot, I get lots of happy students when I teach them this!
 
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Thank you! Any help with the actually writing side of this is helpful.

Yea... I did notice my topic has a lot of extra bits I can talk about especially as it is an undergrad dissertation. I would love to take it to an MSc but at the moment I don't have the money to do one. Thinking I might take a few years out to work (hopefully with showjumping) and come back to it, but we will see. Think I will just try and survive this one first! :P
 
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