Occupational Therapists and Therapeutic Riding

Abstract

There are several contexts in which it is desirable to know how individuals perceive animals. However, most people describe these feelings with little precision. Several scales are useful for assessing attitudes toward individual animals of people who currently own or have owned pets. These usually include items about the role of the pet in the family, habitual means of interacting with the pet, and so on. The Animal Thematic Apperception Test (ATAT) was designed to assess attitudes toward animals independent of pet-ownership status by means of semantic differential scale ratings of line drawings. Preliminary evaluation of this test was completed on a sample of 68 white undergraduate students. The current study was designed to examine further the validity and reliability of the scale and the effect of the presence of animals in various scenes on individuals' perceptions of both the scenes and the people in them. Students (N=213) examined three separate scenes, two with and one without animals, and rated each scene and each person in it according to a semantic differential scale. The order in which the scenes were shown and the presence or not of animals within specific scenes were varied randomly. Validity of one scale for the scenes and two scales for the people in them were tested via factor analysis and Cronbach's alphas. Split half analyses established the reliability of these scales, and analyses of variance examined the effect of the presence of animals on scores on the three subscales. Animals did have an effect on perceptions of scenes and people in them as measured with the ATAT, and these effects were scene specific. The ATAT was thus judged to be useful for evaluating individuals' perceptions of animals, differences in perceptions of animals between groups, and changes in perceptions of animals. Applications are discussed.