Dog and owner characteristics predict training success

This repository provides the reproducible research materials for our project that investigates the characteristics of dogs, owners, and their interaction that predict dog training success. This includes the following:

• Data
• R script for data analysis
• R Markdown file for the manuscript
• R Markdown file for supplementary materials

Citation

If you use any of these materials, please cite:

Stevens, J. R., Wolff, L. M., Bosworth, M., & Morstad, J. (2021). Dog and owner characteristics predict training success. Animal Cognition, 24(2) 219–230 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-020-01458-0.

Summary

We collected survey, behavioral, and hormonal data from 99 dog/owner pairs from the Prairie Skies Dog Training Canine Good Citizen classes from Jan 2018 − Oct 2019. We generated three data files: one for the primary survey, behavioral, and hormonal measures for each dog/owner pair, one with the survey item responses for calculating internal consistency reliability, and one with the behavioral data scores for calculating inter-rater reliability. For the primary analysis data file, each row represents all of a single participant’s responses. For the survey item data file, each row represents a participant’s responses to a particular survey. For the behavioral task data, each row represents a dog’s responses for a single session.

License

All materials presented here are released under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC BY 4.0). You are free to:

• Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
• Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially. Under the following terms:
• Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.

No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

Files

Data files

stevens_etal_data1.csv (primary behavioral, cognitive, and cortisol data set)

• id - Dog id number
• date - Date owner completed survey
• class - Obedience training class
• dog_age - Age of dog in years
• dog_sex - Sex of dog
• dog_neutered - Neuter status (neutered/spayed = Yes, intact = No)
• owner_gender - Gender of owner
• time_train_dog_weekly_num - Number of hours per week spent training
• dog_behavior_bennett_disobedient_score - Disobedience subscale of Bennett & Rohlf behavior scale
• dog_behavior_bennett_aggressive_score - Aggression subscale of Bennett & Rohlf behavior scale
• dog_behavior_bennett_nervous_score - Nervousness subscale of Bennett & Rohlf behavior scale
• dog_behavior_bennett_destructive_score - Destructiveness subscale of Bennett & Rohlf behavior scale
• dog_behavior_bennett_excitable_score - Excitability subscale of Bennett & Rohlf behavior scale
• dog_behavior_bennett_overall_score - Overall score of Bennett & Rohlf behavior scale
• dog_problematic_behaviors_hiby_score - Problematic behavior score of Hiby et al.
• dog_obedience_hiby_score - Obedience score of Hiby et al.
• dias_behavioral_regulation_score - Behavioral regulation subscale of DIAS from Wright et al.
• dias_aggression_score - Aggression subscale of DIAS from Wright et al.
• dias_responsiveness_score - Responsiveness subscale of DIAS from Wright et al.
• dias_overall_score - Overall score for DIAS from Wright et al.
• mdors_score - Monash Dog Owner Relationship Scale score
• personality_extraversion_score - Extraversion score from brief Big-Five personality scale Gosling et al.
• personality_agreeableness_score - Agreeableness score from brief Big-Five personality scale Gosling et al.
• personality_conscientiousness_score - Conscientiousness score from brief Big-Five personality scale Gosling et al.
• personality_stability_score - Stability score from brief Big-Five personality scale Gosling et al.
• personality_openness_score - Openness score from brief Big-Five personality scale Gosling et al.
• lotr_score - Life Orientation Test Revised score from Scheier et al.
• pss_score - Perceived Stress Scale score from Cohen et al.
• crt_score - Cognitive Reflection Task score from Frederick
• numeracy_score - Berlin Numeracy Test score from Cokely et al.
• latency_sit_mean - Mean latency between command and sit behavior (in seconds)
• latency_down_mean - Mean latency between command and down behavior (in seconds)
• cort1 - Cortisol levels before first class meeting (in ug/dL)
• cort2 - Cortisol levels after first class meeting (in ug/dL)
• cort3 - Cortisol levels before last class meeting (in ug/dL)
• cort4 - Cortisol levels after last class meeting (in ug/dL)
• cgc_test - Success in completing Canine Good Citizen test (Pass/Fail)

stevens_etal_data2.csv (item-specific data for calculating internal consistency reliability)

• survey - name of survey
• item_1 - item_13 - individual items (surveys differ on number of items, so NAs represent no items)

stevens_etal_data3.csv (behavioral (sit/down) data for calculating inter-rater reliability)

• block - Replication block (1, 2, or 3)
• coder - Coder ID
• date - Date of behavioral data collection
• id - Dog ID
• latency_sit - Latency between command and sit behavior (in seconds)
• latency_down - Latency between command and down behavior (in seconds)

R code

stevens_etal_2021_rcode.R - code for running computations and generating figures

R Markdown documents

stevens_etal_2021.Rmd - R Markdown document with R code embedded for main manuscript stevens_etal_2021_SM.Rmd - R Markdown document with R code embedded for supplementary materials

Installation

To reproduce these results, first clone the repository. Then, open stevens_etal_2021_rcode.R and ensure that all packages mentioned at the top of the script are installed. Once all packages are installed, run the script in R using source("stevens_etal_2021_rcode.R").

Once the script runs without errors, you can compile the R Markdown document stevens_etal_2021.Rmd. Open this file in RStudio and ensure that you have packages {knitr} and {rmarkdown} installed. Once installed, use knitr to compile the document (control-shift-k). Use the same process to compile stevens_etal_2021_SM.Rmd.

Dataset Metadata

The following table is necessary for this dataset to be indexed by search engines such as Google Dataset Search.

property	value
name	Dog and owner characteristics predict training success dataset
description	The dataset from the paper [Dog and owner characteristics predict training success](https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-020-01458-0). We collected survey, behavioral, and hormonal data from 99 dog/owner pairs from the Prairie Skies Dog Training Canine Good Citizen classes from Jan 2018 − Oct 2019. We generated three data files: one for the primary survey, behavioral, and hormonal measures for each dog/owner pair, one with the survey item responses for calculating internal consistency reliability, and one with the behavioral data scores for calculating inter-rater reliability. For the primary analysis data file, each row represents all of a single participant’s responses. For the survey item data file, each row represents a participant’s responses to a particular survey. For the behavioral task data, each row represents a dog’s responses for a single session.
url	https://github.com/unl-cchil/dogobedience2021
sameAs	https://github.com/unl-cchil/dogobedience2021
citation	https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-020-01458-0
license	property value name CC BY-SA 4.0 url https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/