Investigating canine personality structure using owner questionnaires measuring pet dog behaviour and personality

Questionnaire-based personality and behavioural assessments for domestic dogs are widely used by professional dog handlers, researchers and those working in welfare. In order for behaviour tests to provide accurate, useful information about the future behaviour of test subjects, they need to reflect aspects of personality despite the limited context and time in which they are conducted. It is therefore important for questionnaires used to assess external validity of behaviour tests, to measure aspects of canine personality, and for assessors to understand how context-specific behavioural traits, such as those measured in battery tests, relate to broader personality traits in domestic dogs. Furthermore, the reliability of questionnaire-based tools using behavioural ratings can be significantly affected by questionnaire design and application, particularly when owners are asked to rate their own dogs and when the experience of raters is varied. This paper investigates the hierarchical structure of canine personality by assessing correlations between factor scores from three published owner questionnaires, two of which were designed to assess aspects of canine personality and one designed to assess narrow, behavioural traits that are somewhat context-specific. Between-factor correlations were also compared between sub-groups of owners and dogs based on demographic factors, to investigate the stability of these relationships in a mixed sample of volunteer pet dog owners and pet dogs. Several broad clusters of traits were identified, which each correlated with a number of context-specific behavioural traits. Three of these traits, ‘Neuroticism’ and ‘Extraversion’ in the Monash Canine Personality Questionnaire-Revised and ‘Behavioural Regulation’ in the Dog Impulsivity Assessment Scale, show similarities to personality traits identified in other species. However, notable differences were identified in the relationships between some factors in owner groups which varied in dog-related work experience, which calls in to question the validity of structure identified. These variations may reflect a lack of reliability in some measures when experience level within a rater sample is mixed. Further investigation of the hierarchical structure of canine personality is required, using tools which behave more reliably with a mixed group of raters.