The Children’s Treatment of Animals Questionnaire (CTAQ): A Psychometric Investigation

Kelly L. Thompson and Eleonora Gullone

Recognizing the importance of increasing the levels of children’s humane behavior toward animals other than humans relates to the developing of valid and reliable measures of such behavior. This study reports the psychometric properties of the Children’s Treatment of Animals Questionnaire (CTAQ), which assesses children’s humane behavior toward nonhuman animals. The findings, based on self-reports by 61 elementary school children (25 boys; 36 girls), showed that the 13-item scale has adequate internal consistency. In addition, comparing two administrations of the scale over a five-week period demonstrated good test-retest reliability. The scale’s convergent validity was demonstrated with significant correlations between responses on the CTAQ and two previously validated measures of empathy. The study concluded that the CTAQ is a valid and reliable measure for assessing the degree to which children’s behavior toward nonhuman animals is humane. Determining the sensitivity of the measure to change (following humane education) and the predictive validity of the measure (identification of children who are cruel to animals) will require further research.
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Companion Animal Attitude and its Family Pattern in Kuwait

Ghenaim Al-Fayez, Abdelwahid Awadalla, Donald I. Templer, and Hiroko Arikawa

The Pet Attitude Scale (PAS) score of Kuwaiti adolescents correlated more highly with that of their fathers than with the score of their mothers. This contrasts with a similar American study in which the PAS score of adolescents correlated more highly with the score of their mothers. The different pattern seemed to be congruent with the father’s more dominant role in Arab families. This study found that Kuwaiti family members had scores on the PAS about a standard deviation lower than that of American family members, a finding viewed as consistent with the less positive attitude toward companion animals in Muslim countries.
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Appropriating Liberation

Barry Kew

Media and nonhuman animal liberation is an under-researched area in the United Kingdom. If the most appropriate metaphor describing the media/social movement relationship is “dance,” then largely the media and animal liberation are dancing in the dark of neglect. Drawing upon different approaches to media and offering some notes toward animal liberation media studies, this article explores how, by engaging with the “established terms of the problematic at play,” animal liberationists and their claims are appropriated by speciesist ideology through exclusion and confusing and redefining maneuvers. A contextual analysis of its typical texts raises questions of the public interest role, due impartiality of media and, implicitly, of movement strategy.
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The "Furry Ceiling": Clinical Psychology and Animal Studies

Carol D. Raupp

Clinical psychology attempts to describe and explain mental disorders to prevent or remedy these problems. Historically, animals other humans made few appearances in the clinical psychology literature except in association with fetishes, phobias, and research models of human disorders. Today, most clinically relevant research efforts in Animal Studies are directed toward understanding animal cruelty's connection with psychopathology and toward developing therapeutic human-animal interactions in service settings. Although Animal Studies has broadened our understanding of clinical issues and opportunities in our relationships with other animals, it remains separate from mainstream clinical psychology.
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ANIMAL ISSUES

“Would You Let Your Child Die Rather than Experiment on Nonhuman Animals?” A Comparative Questions Approach

Katherine Perlo

By placing the title question alongside five comparative questions and offering answers to the whole set as given by seven imaginary respondents, this paper analyzes the question’s deceptiveness and the inconsistency of its implied claims. Apart from ambiguities of situation, history, and agency, the question’s demand for a choice between “your child” and “nonhuman animals” obscures a field of other values regarding (1) species, (2) family ties, and (3) the wrongness-in-itself (or otherwise) of the experiments envisioned. This paper argues that while a “No” answer to the title question does not, as intended by the questioner, support the experimental status quo, even a “Yes” answer does not reflect a choice between one’s own child and animals.
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The Labor Process: How the Underdog is Kept Under

Peter Dickens


“Marxism and the Underdog” is an impressive paper. It usefully outlines the strengths and weaknesses of the Marxist (what I would prefer to term “historical materialist”) perspective on animals. As the paper rightly suggests, much of Marx’s own work was predicated on the opposition between humans and animals other than humans. Yet, as the paper also points out, many of his concepts and critiques are useful for addressing contemporary concerns. Among the most important recent examples is Benton’s critique of liberal and individualist “animal rights.” It is a perspective on Marx and his assertion that much human rights discourse offers little or no fundamental challenge to the patterns of economic, social, and political power that pervade capitalist society. There is little point in allocating rights to humans (and to animals) if the kind of society in which they live systematically denies the realization of these rights. I mention Benton here because his important perspective on animal rights is not fully explained in the paper under review here.
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Marxism and the Moral Status of Animals

Ted Benton
Perlo’s engagement with the complex and ambiguous relationship between Marxism (and, more broadly, the socialist traditions) and the moral status of animals is very much to be welcomed. This sort of engagement is valuable for three main reasons. First, the more narrowly focused social movement activity -- whether committed to animal rights, social justice in the workplace, or advancement for women -- is liable to cut itself off from critical insights created in the context of other movements. I became aware of this, particularly during the 1980s in relation to radical green politics, as both deepening and widening the already existing socialist case against neo-liberal capitalism, just as the women’s liberation movement had done a decade or more earlier. Second, this sort of analysis is valuable because without it “single-issue” movements run a serious risk of advancing the claims of their own preferred social group at the cost of (usually unknowingly and unintentionally) deepening the oppression or exploitation of other groups. Third, where radical social movements campaign for changes that conflict with the interests of wealthy and powerful interests, and are committed to democratic values, they need to be able to bring public opinion with them.

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