Potential Risk Factors for Aggression and Playfulness in Cats: Examination of a Pooling Fallacy Using Fe-BARQ as an Example.

ABSTRACT: Using a popular method of behaviour evaluation which rates the intensity of behaviour in different contexts, we demonstrate how pooling item scores relating to a given construct can reveal different potential risk factors for the dependent variable depending on how the total score is constructed. We highlight how similar simple total scores can be constructed through very different combinations of constituent items. We argue for the importance of examining individual item score distributions, and the results from different intensity thresholds before deciding on the preferred method for calculating a meaningful dependent variable. We consider simply pooling individual item scores which conflate context with intensity to calculate an average score and assuming this represents a biologically

SUBMITTER: Gajdos Kmecova N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7813754 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature