Abstract
Simple SummaryThe way horses are trained and managed influences their behaviour. The Equine Behaviour Assessment and Research Questionnaire (E-BARQ) was developed to gather information on the training, management, and behaviour of domestic horses. An international panel was established to assist with the questionnaire development and the pilot questionnaire collected data on 1320 horses. Statistical analysis revealed the E-BARQ to be a suitable representation of relevant features of horse training and management and the objective reporting of horse behaviour.The Equine Behaviour Assessment and Research Questionnaire (E-BARQ) is a questionnaire instrument developed to obtain quantitative data on the domestic equine triad of training, management, and behaviour of horses. The E-BARQ was developed to identify how changes in training and management impact behaviour over time, to define normal behaviour in horses, and to discover how to improve rider safety and horse welfare, leading to ethical equitation. During the development of the E-BARQ, we also investigated how best to motivate stakeholders to engage with this citizen science project. The pilot version of the E-BARQ collected qualitative data on respondents’ experience of the questionnaire. The pilot questionnaire was developed with the assistance of an international panel (with professional expertise in horse training, equitation science, veterinary science, equestrian coaching, welfare, animal behaviour, and elite-level riding), and was used to collect data on 1320 horses from approximately 1194 owner/caregiver respondents, with an option for respondents to provide free-text feedback. A Rotated Principal Component Analysis of the 218 behavioural, management, and training questionnaire items extracted a total of 65 rotated components. Thirty-six of the 65 rotated components demonstrated high internal reliability. Of the 218 questionnaire items, 43 items failed to reach the Rotated Principal Component Analysis criteria and were not included in the final version of the E-BARQ. Survey items that failed the Rotated Principal Component Analysis inclusion criteria were discarded if found to have a less than 85% response rate, or a variance of less than 1.3. Of those that survived the Rotated Principal Component Analysis, items were further assigned to horse temperament (17 rotated components), equitation (11 rotated components), and management and equipment (8 rotated components) groups. The feedback from respondents indicated the need for further items to be added to the questionnaire, resulting in a total of 214 items for the final E-BARQ survey. Many of these items were further grouped into question matrices, and the demographic items for horse and handler included, giving a final total of 97 questions on the E-BARQ questionnaire. These results provided content validity, showing that the questionnaire items were an acceptable representation of the entire horse training, management, and behavioural domain for the development of the final E-BARQ questionnaire.
Highlights
Over centuries, the role of the horse in society has changed dramatically, so too have the ways we train and manage domestic horses
Examination of a scree plot of a parallel analysis, using R’s fa.parallel function, investigated the number of rotated components in a data matrix, and was used to determine the number of components to extract for rotation resulting in 8 for Equine Behaviour Assessment and Research Questionnaire (E-BARQ)-m, 14 for E-BARQ-e
This criterion was more stringent than the so-called Kaiser rule, which excludes all rotated components with eigenvalues less than 1 which would have resulted in 15 for E-BARQ-m, 17 for E-BARQ-e, and 33 for E-BARQ-t
Summary
The role of the horse in society has changed dramatically, so too have the ways we train and manage domestic horses. As many traditional training and management methods are outdated, and often inappropriate, modern practices have developed in a somewhat haphazard manner, at times incorporating antiquated folklore, obsolete techniques, and potentially unethical practices [1]. This highlights the need for evidence-based practice that prioritises horse welfare [1] and ethical equitation [2]. The ways we train and manage horses will always have a direct impact on their behaviour, which in turn affects both rider safety and horse welfare [3]. Horses have the unique position of being the only animal used in Olympic sports, yet it could be argued that the rules protecting their welfare [5] in such sports are insufficient, inadequately defined, and patchily enforced [4,6]
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