By Carol Tinga
Little research exists characterizing owner-companion rabbit relationships. In a previous survey-based study, many rabbit owners failed to answer human-animal attachment questions. The HAIS was developed to study human-animal interactions with dogs, cats, horses, and small caged animals as a group. We explored its use for measuring owner-companion rabbit relationships. An online survey (Qualtrics) included questions about owner demographics and perceptions; rabbit demographics, husbandry, problem behaviour, veterinary care; time spent together; the 24-item HAIS; two other relationship scales (not presented here); and open textboxes for owners’ views on not applicable and potential, additional items. Quantitative and qualitative data were analyzed using SAS Studio and NVivo, respectively.
Participants (N=2093) were mostly female (82.5%), 31.0 years old with 5.0 years of rabbit experience (medians), lived in Canada/USA (77.5%), and had one rabbit (50.4%). Rabbits were mostly male (58.4%), spayed/neutered (77.5%), lived only indoors (87.2%), and had out-of-enclosure time (93.9%). The HAIS (N=2025) had 3.2% missing data overall (0.2-0.6% missing/item). Cronbach’s alpha was 0.86. The mean animal behaviour subscale score (12.6) was similar to results for dogs and cats (12.3) and not small, caged animals (5.9) in the original evaluation study. In the Principal Component Analysis, all scale items loaded highly, and six components had eigenvalues >1: Attentive Owner, Discord, Equivocal, Attentive Rabbit, Tricks/Training, Feeding Time. Popular not applicable items were attempting (8.2%)/obeying (1.6%) tricks/training and aggression-by-owner (5.6%)/aggression-by-rabbit (5.0%) whereas popular missing items were rabbit-specific behaviours (5.9%; e.g., nose nudges, flopping).
The HAIS performed well with companion rabbits with little missing data, a high Cronbach’s alpha, and clear identification of scale components. Thus, the HAIS appears to be a reasonable tool for quantifying owner-companion rabbit interactions for free-roaming house rabbits possibly because interactions are more similar to dogs and cats than for caged rabbits. The HAIS could be used for pre-/post-measures in intervention studies.
