Review Reports - Beyond the Pet-Effect—Examining Bio-Psychosocial Aspects of Pet Ownership and Introducing the “Aunty Phenomenon”

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for submitting this very interesting and well-written paper. I only have a few minor issues/comments/questions.

Since you introduce the concepts of pet-effect paradox and the aunty phenomenon, and place them in inverted commas, Ii think it would be better to introduce these concepts in a better way. in Lines 30-31 you describe what it is but then introduce the term in the next sentence without actually saying this has been called the pet-effect paradox and giving the reader the source of this term. That sentence refers to reference 2 which is not where it comes from. The previous sentence has the extra reference [1]. Did Hal Herzog coin this phrase?

Similarly, are you introducing the idea of the aunty phenomenon in this paper? I think it is very interesting but please make it clear if that is the case or where it comes from.

I like the use of previous data and the reanalysis of these. Can you please state somewhere that the authors of the previous three papers agreed to the use of these data. Also, that the participants agreed to multiple use of their surveys.

Can you also please explain how you tackled the chance that the same people may have filled out the surveys. It may not be 840 participants. Line 91 seems to say you will explain this potential problem, but I couldn't find where you did. I apologize if it is there.

The surveys did not use all the same measurement instruments. You list 4 that you say were used by all three, but then you use more than these four in your analysis. This is a bit confusing. It may be useful to have a table with the three surveys and which ones were used in each. The number of participants could appear in this table. This could replace Lines 93-113. Perhaps explain you are not always comparing the same people or the same numbers, or correct me if that is wrong.

Line 314. The use of the term 'animal husbandry' is a little weird here. You have not used that term anywhere else. Do you mean 'the care of an animal (or pet"?

Please be consistent throughout whether you are measuring gender or sex.

Lines starting at 463 and 492 seem a bit repetitive. You have explained the aunty phenomenon in the introduction. There is no need to repeat that here.

You recognize that although pet ownership appears to be correlated to poorer QoL, depression etc., this is not necessarily cause and effect. People with a stronger bond report a positive influence of their pets in their lives. The pets may be helping as they think they are and they would be worse without them. Depression and loneliness increases with age and as children leave home and people find themselves living alone. I think you could expand on this thinking.

Author Response

Dear Sir or Madam,

thank you very much for giving us the possibility to revise our manuscript “Beyond Evolutionary Co-Habitation: The Power of the “Aunty Phenomenon” in Human- Animal Relationships” now “Beyond the Pet-Effect – Examining Bio-Psycho-Social Aspects of Pet Ownership and Introducing the “Aunty Phenomenon“. We are very grateful for your valuable comments and we tried to carefully consider all mentioned remarks. We have implemented your suggestions in our manuscript by rewriting passages that needed clarification, adding suggested information and revising figures and tables. All changes related to your comments are addressed by outlining every correction point by point.

Thank you again for your valuable feedback which helped to improve the submitted manuscript. We hope that your second evaluation of our revised version of the manuscript allows publication.

Respectfully submitted

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This is an interesting study which adds to the discussion about the role of companion animals and human health. Below are some suggestions for improvement.

Introduction

page 2 line 65: Reference 9 does not include loneliness or depression in the data collected. Please check and make sure the proper reference is included.

Materials and Methods

page 3 line 101 please correct the typo: "Enrichd" Social Support

page 3 line 104-105 please provide information about the bio-psycho-social health measures that were included form this study.

Results

Please include a table that describes the total numbers of population that was analyzed including demographic characteristics and study variables.

LAPS has a total possible score of 69 so it is unclear why the mean values you have presented in Tables 5, 7, 8 include means that are in the 70s and 80s. Please explain how these means were computed.

Author Response

Dear Sir or Madam,

Thank you again for your valuable feedback which helped to improve the submitted manuscript. We hope that your second evaluation of our revised version of the manuscript allows publication.

Respectfully submitted

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

General comments

This is an interesting study which analysed the association between having a companion animal and the owners’ quality of life. Its main contribution and strength are the very insightful exploration on what can affect pet owners’ quality of life which builds up on the reasons for the high variability in human-animal bond research.

The manuscript is confusing as it lacks structure. The introduction does not explain what is known and what are the gaps; it is not clear within the methodology and results which scale was used in which analysis and if all scales and questions were analysed; the discussion repeats the introduction where very few studies are used to compare and help clarify what was found by this manuscript.

This manuscript cites very few references (only 10 in the introduction) which was unexpected since there are hundreds of publications within the human-animal interaction field, including systematic reviews regarding the effects of pet ownership and how variable results are. Hence, the background and gap in knowledge are not clear and do not represent what is known so far which needs to be significantly improved, e.g., not all publications that use scales show negative impact of pet ownership on their carers. This should be mentioned and discussed (briefly), otherwise, the study is very biased.

Specific comments

Title: The current title does not reflect what was found in this study since results do not allow to infer causality.

Introduction: Very few references overall, presence of methodology, not well structured. At the end, it is important to have the aims, hypothesis and maybe a brief overview of what is going to be used, e.g., mixed methods analysis of three different datasets of pet owners going through stressful situations. However, these are all scattered throughout the introduction whilst the background and gap are not really identified.

Methodology: Have all subjects taken part in the whole analysis? Did you have to deal with missing values or was the data complete for all participants? In addition, it is not clear if all scales described in the methodology were used and if so, where. Also, line 87 mentions that “all three surveys measured the same or at least comparable constructs”. Does it mean that for some measurements it was used two or more different scales? If so, it is important to specify within the methodology.

You have carried out many analyses with very interesting results. However, it is long and a bit confusing to understand the sequence and why all of them were performed. The analysis could be simpler and show similar results if carrying out a multivariate regression analysis having groups and all demographic data as independent variables for Quality of Life and another model for Sense of Coherence. Another option is to better structure both methods and results, so the reader can follow and appreciate everything that was done.

Lines 104-105. It is important to specify the scales that both this paper and current study used since the first two papers did not use the same scales.

Lines 108-109. Time frames were not specified so we cannot know that they are similar, i.e., the text mentions years, but not how long each survey lasted.

Statistical analysis: As previously mentioned, it is confusing as to when each scale was used for which statistical method. It could be helpful to separate them in sub-headings such as “Physical, psychological and social well-being” OR by the name of the scales used, e.g., “Sense of Coherence and Quality of Life”. It is not clear when they are used as dependent or independent variables either.

Line 267: K-means cluster analysis was performed, however, there is no indication on how many clusters were chosen beforehand and why. Please clarify.

Qualitative analysis: It is not clear which method was performed since to my knowledge there are thematic analysis and content analysis. Braun and Clarke’s (2006) paper aimed to clarify the use of thematic analysis and introduce a specific type which they now call Reflexive thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2019; 2023). Could you clarify and/or add a reference for “thematic content analysis”, please?

Results: Tables and Figures should be understood by readers without the need of a text; thus, it is important that their captions explain acronyms, which analysis was performed (e.g., Spearman correlation), type of population (e.g., comparing pet owners with non-pet owners) and number of subjects that took part in it. In addition, I did not identify the results for structural equation modelling, only ANOVAs, t-tests, correlation and cluster analysis. Likewise, results related to the “seven predefined statements concerning the role of animals during the pandemic” does not seem to be reported. If they are not going to be reported, there is no need to mention it in the main text, or you could clarify that these questions are not being used.

Line 314. It is not clear what you meant by “animal husbandry”. Would it be pet ownership?

Table 1. It would be very helpful to have a more detailed caption for table 1 such as which analysis was carried out, how many subjects in each group. Figure 1 would benefit from having the tool you used for measuring quality of life.

Table 2. Please write the whole name of each tool you used in the legend, e.g., LAPS= Lexington Attachment to Pets Scale (including if different scales for the same construct were used) and standardise if you are using the name of the scale or its main meaning, i.e., loneliness, as well as add more information about the analysis, i.e., Multiple Regression Analysis Predicting Quality of Life (WHOQOL-Bref) in pet owners (n=…). In addition, what does “children” mean? Presence of children or having children instead of pet which is what line 351 suggests.

Table 3. Has this test been done comparing quality of life as well? I understood it was only depression.

Table 4. It would be helpful to know the sample size for each group either in the table or in a supplementary material.

Figure 3. Very interesting result! Please clarify what LAPS mean in the caption. Adding number of subjects is always helpful as well.

Table 6. Which scale is ESSI?

Tables 7 and 8. It is not clear why the initial cluster centres are reported and why two clusters were chosen. It starts with two groups according to gender with very different characteristics (which is very interesting to see the differences between genders!) and finished with two groups of women with different scores in most of the scales. In addition, Table 9 does not mean much if you do not explain it, or the reader knows a lot about the process within K-Means Cluster analysis. I’m not sure tables 7 and 9 are needed in the paper and maybe you could add them at the supplementary material?

Figure 4. These percentages together do not reach 100%. It is important to explain why or how they were calculated at methodology.

Discussion: In this section it is important to discuss your results in light to what has been found so far. Therefore, citing other studies that agree or not with your results or can help explain your results are very valuable to build up on the current knowledge.

Line 452. Which studies? It is very important to cite them (e.g., give examples), especially for readers that are not within the human-animal interactions field.

Lines 461-462. Good point. There is a paper suggesting that the UCLA loneliness scale is not sensitive to pet ownership which would be useful to use in your discussion (Gilbey A, Tani K. Pets and loneliness: examining the efficacy of a popular measurement instrument. Anthrozoös. (2020) 33:529–46. doi: 10.1080/08927936.2020.1771058).

Lines 463-465. Please cite the references for the “Aunty phenomenon”.

Lines 465-472. It is a good point and something to be explored further. Because your methodology does not include any evaluation regarding how much work pet owners have with their animals you could cite a study that may have analysed that already.

Lines 497-502. It is definitely a good point! However, because these results show association and not causation it is not possible to know whether pet owners have their quality of life reduced because of their companion animals or they acquire their animals because their quality of life are poor. Therefore, by mentioning this possibility even though your focus is on the “aunty phenomenon”, it would enrich your discussion.

Lines 503-508. Very good point!

Lines 512 -516. I am afraid that the challenges are not clear from your results, that is why citing studies that found it is important.

Conclusion: It would be more helpful to include here the key results of this study.

Author Response

Dear Sir or Madam,

Thank you again for your valuable feedback which helped to improve the submitted manuscript. We hope that your second evaluation of our revised version of the manuscript allows publication.

Respectfully submitted

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear authors

Thank you for the opportunity to review your manuscript and for addressing my previous suggestions. I believe it is much clearer now which will allow readers to understand the great work you have done.

Congratulations and all the best!