Abstract
The Observation of Human-Animal Interaction for Research (OHAIRE) is a coding tool developed to capture the behavior of children when interacting with social partners and animals in naturalistic settings. The OHAIRE behavioral categories of focus are emotional displays, social communication behaviors toward adults and peers, behaviors directed toward animals or experimental control objects, and interfering behaviors. To date, the OHAIRE has been used by 14 coders to code 2,732 min of video across four studies with a total of 201 participants ages 5 to 18 years (M = 10.1, SD = 2.5). Studies involved animal-assisted intervention with three species (i.e., dogs, horses, and guinea pigs) and three populations (i.e., autism spectrum disorder, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and typically developing children) in a school, a therapeutic horseback riding program, a group therapy program, and the hospital setting. We explored the psychometric properties of the OHAIRE through analyses of its inter-rater reliability, intra-rater reliability, convergent and divergent validity, and internal structure, using data from these four human-animal interaction studies. The average inter-rater reliability was excellent (kappa = 0.81), with good reliability in most of the behavioral categories coded. Intra-rater reliability was consistently excellent (0.87 ≤ kappa ≤0.96). Internal structure analyses with Cronbach's alpha supported the exploratory use of subscales to measure social communication behaviors toward peers (α = 0.638) and adults (α = 0.605), and interactions experimental control objects (α = 0.589), and the use of a subscale to measure interactions with animals (α = 0.773). Correlation analyses with multiple questionnaires showed a convergence between positive emotional display and social behaviors as assessed by the OHAIRE and social skills as assessed by the Social Skills Rating System (SSRS) and the Social Communication Questionnaires (SCQ). Little concordance was found between the OHAIRE and the Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS) or the Aberrant Behavior Checklist-Community (ABC). The OHAIRE shows promise for wider use in the field of Human-Animal Interaction, with a need for generalization across more settings and ages.
Highlights
BackgroundThe notion that animals can affect people’s lives and behaviors in many positive ways is investigated in a field of research known as Human-Animal Interaction (HAI)
We describe the development process of the OHAIRE, and present the results of analyses of its psychometric properties collected over four studies [10,11,12], including analyses of the OHAIRE’s reliability, and validity
Thirty-three groups of three children participated in this program, each pairing one child with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) with two typically developing (TD) children randomly selected from the same classroom (N = 99)
Summary
BackgroundThe notion that animals can affect people’s lives and behaviors in many positive ways is investigated in a field of research known as Human-Animal Interaction (HAI). Assessment in HAI research has relied heavily on questionnaire data and there has been a call to use more physiological measures and behavioral observation. Physiological measures and behavioral observation are considered more objective than questionnaires, because they quantify observable physical phenomena rather than mental experiences as reported by a study participant’s or caregiver’s perceptions. While the instruments used to collect physiological data rely on direct physical measures (e.g., heart beats per minute) and assays (e.g., salivary cortisol), reducing the influence of human error, the quantification of behavior still requires the direct involvement of a human observer. A human observer typically watches study participants directly or via a video recording and assigns numerical values to the participants’ behaviors based on precise behavior definitions. From the combination of such behavior definitions with sampling and scoring procedures, researchers can develop standardized coding schemes or systems
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