The Science and Social Validity of Companion Animal Welfare: Functionally Defined Parameters in a Multidisciplinary Field
Measure the dog’s body, not the owner’s opinion, to prove your training is truly socially valid.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Novack and colleagues reviewed how dog trainers decide if a method is "good."
They say asking owners "Do you like this?" is not enough.
The paper urges trainers to copy welfare scientists and track heart-rate, cortisol, and natural behavior.
What they found
The review finds no dog can fill out a satisfaction survey.
Instead, low cortisol, steady heart-rate variability, and normal play tell us the dog feels safe.
These biology signs give clearer social validity than owner opinion alone.
How this fits with other research
Reed (1991) already warned that human surveys are just opinions unless backed by data. Novack answers that call for dogs by swapping surveys for physiology.
McCabe et al. (2023) saw heart-rate add little during functional analyses of destructive behavior. The tasks differ: McCabe wanted quick reinforcer clues; Novack wants long-term welfare, so the ideas coexist.
Salzer et al. (2025) proved standard ABA functional analysis works for dogs. Novack’s metrics can now judge if those treatments also feel good to the animal.
Vos et al. (2013) showed heart-rate variability matches emotion codes in non-verbal humans, giving Novack a ready-made method to port to pets.
Why it matters
Next time you shape calm leash walking or reduce barking, clip on a heart-rate monitor and note cortisol via saliva swabs. Pair drops in both with reinforcement. You will market your program with hard welfare data instead of cute stories.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Pet dogs are more prone to exhibit challenging behaviors than ever before. Dog trainers are increasingly tasked with helping pet owners resolve behavior issues, not just teach their charges good manners. The interventions used by professionals to help ameliorate behavior complaints must be evidence-based and include the effectiveness of the intervention, how the intervention is perceived by the learner, and how the intervention affects the learner’s quality of life before, during, and after behavior intervention procedures. The objective of this paper is to review literature from multiple scientific disciplines and demonstrate how concepts from applied behavior analysis and the animal welfare sciences can be used together to ensure that the animal undergoing intervention experiences good welfare during the training process. Social validity refers to the social significance and acceptability of intervention goals, procedures, and outcomes. Animal practitioners, who are often guided by the principles of ABA, lack the benefit of verbal participants (at least with respect to target animals) with which to assess a client’s needs and preferences. The study of a learner’s welfare is useful for determining areas where intervention is needed or how the learner feels about an intervention that is underway. Three tenets of animal welfare measurement include physiological function, naturalistic behavior, and affect, where affect refers to private events, including emotions, which are a function of the same variables and contingencies responsible for controlling public behavior. The development of new technologies allows us to look “under the skin” and account for subjective experiences that can now be observed objectively. We introduce the reader to tools available from the animal welfare sciences for the objective measurement of social validity from the learner’s perspective.
Animals : an Open Access Journal from MDPI, 2023 · doi:10.3390/ani13111850