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. 2021 Jul 2;11(7):1991.
doi: 10.3390/ani11071991.

Reliability and Validity of Seven Feline Behavior and Personality Traits

Salla Mikkola  1   2   3 , Milla Salonen  1   2   3 , Emma Hakanen  1   2   3 , Sini Sulkama  1   2   3 , Hannes Lohi  1   2   3
Affiliations

Reliability and Validity of Seven Feline Behavior and Personality Traits

Salla Mikkola et al. Animals (Basel). .

Abstract

Domestic cats are popular pets, and they have personalities, with stable behavior differences between individuals. Lately, feline behavior and personality have been studied with different approaches, for example, with owner-completed questionnaires. The majority of these studies, however, lack a sufficient validation and reliability assessment of the questionnaires used. We designed an online feline behavior and personality questionnaire to collect cat behavior data from their owners. Then, we ran a factor analysis to study the structure of personality and behavior in a dataset of over 4300 cats. For validation, we studied the internal consistency, test-retest reliability, inter-rater reliability, convergent validity and discriminant validity of this questionnaire and extracted factors. In addition, we briefly examined breed differences in the seven discovered factors: fearfulness, activity/playfulness, aggression toward humans, sociability toward humans, sociability toward cats, excessive grooming and litterbox issues. Most of the rank ordering of breeds within each trait paralleled what has been found in previous studies. The validity and reliability of the questionnaire and factors were good, strengthening owner-completed questionnaires as a method to collect behavioral data from pet animals. Breed differences suggest a genetic background for personality. However, these differences should be studied further with multidimensional models, including environmental and biological variables.

Keywords: Felis silvestris catus; cat personality; convergent validity; discriminant validity; inter-rater reliability; personality; temperament; test–retest reliability.

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Conflict of interest statement

H.L. is a co-founder and E.H. was an employee of Petsofi Ltd. during the data collection, providing the survey platform for data acquisition. The authors declare no other competing interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Flow chart of the study population and sample size in feline behavior and personality study. BD = birthdate.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Breed differences in personality factors (A) fearfulness and (B) aggression toward humans.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Breed differences in factors (A) sociability toward cats, (B) sociability toward humans and (C) activity/playfulness.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Breed differences in factors (A) litterbox issues and (B) excessive grooming.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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