Exploring the ‘Pet Effect’: Does Playing with Pets Contribute to Owner Wellbeing?
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsReview of Gradidge, Loughnan, and Gibson’s Understanding the Links between Pet Play and Wellbeing, manuscript ID pets-3221894. Gradidge et al. performed a correlation study looking for relations between the number of play behaviors in pets and wellbeing and anxiety in humans. Unfortunately, the relations were not statistically significant. They also address additional relationships – the number of play behaviors with pet life stage, human playfulness, and pet species (cats vs dogs). Not surprisingly, older pets play less than younger pets. Human playfulness was only related to the number of play behaviors on the first day with a small effect size. Dogs were perceived as more playful than cats but the authors argue that this might be due to the fact that in the UK, cats are outside most of the day. I am not sure that their results are sufficiently interesting or have sufficient theoretical implications to warrant publication.
Issues:
Line 2: The title implies that there is a link between pet play and wellbeing. Your results do not support such a relation. The title should be changed so it does not imply a “link” when there is insufficient evidence of such a relation.
Lines 6-22: The Instructions for Authors for Pets states that the abstract should contain: “3) Results: Summarize the article's main findings; and 4) Conclusion: Indicate the main conclusions or interpretation.” I do not see these discussed in the first paragraph. The abstract on the MDPI review site includes this information but the information is not in the manuscript.
Line 132: Your sample is 74.6% female and 89.9% white. Is this representative of your population? If not, you need to discuss the impact of a non-representative sample in your discussion.
Lines 323-325: A lack of a statistically significant effect does not imply a lack of an effect. This is not clear in the second part of the sentence: “and is not a contributing factor to the ‘pet effect’”.
Lines 325-327: The lack of statistically significant results adds little, if anything, to the literature. As stated in the previous comment, a lack of a statistically significant effect does not imply a lack of an effect.
Lines 330-331: This might be an example of a file-drawer problem. Others may have failed to find a relation between the variables and therefore failed to publish. Thus “for the first time” may not be accurate. You could say “for the first time in the published literature”.
Minor issues:
Lines 4-5: Include a superscripted 1 and 2 with the universities so the reader can correctly identify the affiliation of the authors on line 3.
The Instructions for Authors for Pets states: “In the text, reference numbers should be placed in square brackets [ ], and placed before the punctuation; for example [1], [1–3] or [1,3]. For embedded citations in the text with pagination, use both parentheses and brackets to indicate the reference number and page numbers; for example [5] (p. 10). or [6] (pp. 101–105).” Please reformat your citations to the appropriate format.
Line 30: Consider deleting “indeed”.
Lines 53-54: A lack of statistical significance does not imply a lack of an effect or of a relation. You should reword this sentence like you word the sentence starting at the end of line 55.
Line 61: Consider deleting “sorely”.
Line 127: “Data” is a plural noun and requires a plural verb.
Lines 130 and 140: To me, it seems odd to exclude participants who do not conform to traditional genders. Please explain why you did so. At line 166 I see why you excluded them. You need to mention that gender is a covariate near line 130.
Lines 146-147: “Adult pet owners” and “elderly pet owners” are ambiguous. Are the pet owners adult and elderly or are the pets adults and elderly? Perhaps “Owners of adult pets” and “owners of elderly pets” would be less ambiguous.
Line 168-171: This should be moved to the introduction rather than the method.
Line 288: Pet life stage is not an independent variable in your study as you did not randomly assign pets to the various levels of the variable and you did not measure each pet at all levels of the variable. It is a quasi-independent variable.
Because there are two references for Proyer 2012, you need to cite and reference as Proyer 2012a and Proyer 2012b.
References: Many references are missing their DOI. While the instruction to authors say that DOIs are not mandatory, the instructions also say they are highly encouraged. Doing a metadata search at https://crossref.org can help you find the DOI for your references.
Are the following references cited?
ASPCA (no date)
Blanca et al. (2017)
Grieves (2019)
Kim (2013)
Llera & Buzhardt (no date)
O’Neill et al. (2015)
O’Neill et al. (2019)
Paretts (2021)
All three PetPlan (no date)
Pittari et al. (2009)
Sirgy (2021)
Urfer et al (2020)
West et al. (1995)
Comments for author File: 
Comments.docx
Very few edits are needed.
Author Response
Comment 1 (overview): Review of Gradidge, Loughnan, and Gibson’s Understanding the Links between Pet Play and Wellbeing, manuscript ID pets-3221894. Gradidge et al. performed a correlation study looking for relations between the number of play behaviors in pets and wellbeing and anxiety in humans. Unfortunately, the relations were not statistically significant. They also address additional relationships – the number of play behaviors with pet life stage, human playfulness, and pet species (cats vs dogs). Not surprisingly, older pets play less than younger pets. Human playfulness was only related to the number of play behaviors on the first day with a small effect size. Dogs were perceived as more playful than cats but the authors argue that this might be due to the fact that in the UK, cats are outside most of the day. I am not sure that their results are sufficiently interesting or have sufficient theoretical implications to warrant publication.
Response 1: Thank you for your review. The occurrence of the playfulness finding only in the first day sample but not the five-day sample is likely due to lack of statistical power in the five-day sample. We gratefully acknowledge your concerns regarding the effect size. However, small effect sizes are still important to report (Funder et al., 2019), and average effect sizes in social psychology and observational, correlational studies are similar to that found within the current study (e.g., r = .21 which is equivalent to r2 = .042; Funder et al, 2019; Lovakov & Agadullina, 2021; Richard et al., 2003; Schafer & Schwarz, 2019), with small effect sizes likely arising from the variation in, and numerous contributing factors to, human behaviour. As such, small effect sizes in observational psychological studies may still reflect consequential impacts (Funder et al., 2019; Schafer & Schwarz, 2019). In addition, recent evaluations of effect sizes in psychology indicate that average effect sizes have been artificially inflated due to the file drawer problem and lack of pre-registration (e.g. Schafer & Schwarz, 2019). We discuss further below the contribution of null findings to literature.
The current study is also the first to utilise the Perceived Play in Pets Scale, acting as a lay ethogram for participants to record play behaviours in pets. As such, utilisation of this scale to demonstrate perhaps less surprising differences in perceived play between pets of different ages and between species supports the utility of this scale for lay pet owners to measure and record play behaviours that they witness. The role of human playfulness in predicting the number of pet play behaviours witnessed is a novel finding and provides additional construct validity to both the Perceived Play in Pets Scale and the Short Measure for Adult Playfulness.
Comment 2: Line 2: The title implies that there is a link between pet play and wellbeing. Your results do not support such a relation. The title should be changed so it does not imply a “link” when there is insufficient evidence of such a relation.
Response 2: We have now changed the title to ‘Exploring the ‘pet effect’: Does playing with pets contribute to owner wellbeing?’ to emphasise the exploratory nature of the current paper.
Comment 3: Lines 6-22: The Instructions for Authors for Pets states that the abstract should contain: “3) Results: Summarize the article's main findings; and 4) Conclusion: Indicate the main conclusions or interpretation.” I do not see these discussed in the first paragraph. The abstract on the MDPI review site includes this information but the information is not in the manuscript.
Response 3: The abstract was submitted separately rather than as part of the main manuscript. This has now been corrected so the abstract appears in the appropriate format in the full manuscript
Comment 4: Line 132: Your sample is 74.6% female and 89.9% white. Is this representative of your population? If not, you need to discuss the impact of a non-representative sample in your discussion.
Response 4: We have discussed these points as limitations in the discussion section (lines 453-457).
Comment 5: Lines 323-325: A lack of a statistically significant effect does not imply a lack of an effect. This is not clear in the second part of the sentence: “and is not a contributing factor to the ‘pet effect’”.
Response 5: Thank you for raising this, we have reworded the discussion and conclusion sections to emphasise that the current study fails to support pet play as a contributing factor to the pet effect, rather than finding evidence for a lack of effect.
Comment 6: Lines 325-327: The lack of statistically significant results adds little, if anything, to the literature. As stated in the previous comment, a lack of a statistically significant effect does not imply a lack of an effect.
Response 6: Thank you for this comment. While we acknowledge that null findings are traditionally viewed as less impactful, we would argue that in studies with sound methodological and statistical approaches, it is important to publish such null findings in order to counterbalance and correct for the file drawer bias and thus reduce publication bias and enhance accuracy of our understanding (Kepes et al., 2014).
Comment 7: Lines 330-331: This might be an example of a file-drawer problem. Others may have failed to find a relation between the variables and therefore failed to publish. Thus “for the first time” may not be accurate. You could say “for the first time in the published literature”.
Response 7: We have now amended ‘for the first time’ to ‘for the first time in published literature’ as suggested (lines 379-380).
Comment 8: Lines 4-5: Include a superscripted 1 and 2 with the universities so the reader can correctly identify the affiliation of the authors on line 3.
Response 8: We have added the superscripted 1 and 2 as suggested.
Comment 9: The Instructions for Authors for Pets states: “In the text, reference numbers should be placed in square brackets [ ], and placed before the punctuation; for example [1], [1–3] or [1,3]. For embedded citations in the text with pagination, use both parentheses and brackets to indicate the reference number and page numbers; for example [5] (p. 10). or [6] (pp. 101–105).” Please reformat your citations to the appropriate format.
Response 9: We have now updated the references in line with this format, using ACS style.
Comment 10: Line 30: Consider deleting “indeed”.
Response 10: We have now removed ‘indeed’ as suggested (line 62)
Comment 11: Lines 53-54: A lack of statistical significance does not imply a lack of an effect or of a relation. You should reword this sentence like you word the sentence starting at the end of line 55.
Response 11: We have now amended this wording as suggested (lines 82-87).
Comment 12: Line 61: Consider deleting “sorely”.
Response 12: We have now removed ‘sorely’ as suggested (line 92).
Comment 13: Line 127: “Data” is a plural noun and requires a plural verb.
Response 13: We have now amended both instances of use of the word ‘data’ within the manuscript to a plural verb as suggested (lines 17 and 164).
Comment 14: Lines 130 and 140: To me, it seems odd to exclude participants who do not conform to traditional genders. Please explain why you did so. At line 166 I see why you excluded them. You need to mention that gender is a covariate near line 130.
Response 14: We have now stated earlier that gender is included as a covariate within analyses, explaining why we had to exclude for statistical purposes anyone who does not identify as male or female (lines 167-168).
Comment 15: Lines 146-147: “Adult pet owners” and “elderly pet owners” are ambiguous. Are the pet owners adult and elderly or are the pets adults and elderly? Perhaps “Owners of adult pets” and “owners of elderly pets” would be less ambiguous.
Response 15: We have now amended all instances of ‘adult pet owners’ and ‘elderly pet owners’ in the manuscript to ‘owners of adult pets’ and ‘owners of elderly pets’ as suggested (lines 174-175, 185-187).
Comment 16: Line 168-171: This should be moved to the introduction rather than the method.
Response 16: We have now moved this section to the introduction as suggested (lines 146-150 and 156-161).
Comment 17: Line 288: Pet life stage is not an independent variable in your study as you did not randomly assign pets to the various levels of the variable and you did not measure each pet at all levels of the variable. It is a quasi-independent variable.
Response 17: Thanks for raising this, we have now amended this to ‘quasi-independent’ (line 335).
Comment 18: Because there are two references for Proyer 2012, you need to cite and reference as Proyer 2012a and Proyer 2012b.
Response 18: In-text citations have now been changed to numbered citations. We have now added ‘a’ and ‘b’ to these references (lines 564-566 and 601-602).
Comment 19: References: Many references are missing their DOI. While the instruction to authors say that DOIs are not mandatory, the instructions also say they are highly encouraged. Doing a metadata search at https://crossref.org can help you find the DOI for your references.
Response 19: We have now included DOIs for all references where available
Comment 20: Are the following references cited?
ASPCA (no date)
Blanca et al. (2017)
Grieves (2019)
Kim (2013)
Llera & Buzhardt (no date)
O’Neill et al. (2015)
O’Neill et al. (2019)
Paretts (2021)
All three PetPlan (no date)
Pittari et al. (2009)
Sirgy (2021)
Urfer et al (2020)
West et al. (1995)
Response 20: These references are cited in-text within the supplementary materials so were included in the original references list. With the amended numbered referencing, these references are no longer included in the manuscript reference list, but can be added to a supplementary materials reference list as needed
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsI am very glad to see this research on the "pet effect," and I hope this paper will inspire additional work. I appreciate the effort to get more granular with the analysis. The play angle is an ideal beginning. I have two suggestions for strengthening the paper. First, say something in the abstract about the use of statistical methods. I accepted the review invitation thinking this was a qualitative paper, and then I saw regression analysis only after I was committed. Second, discuss in section 4.1 that you recruited participants through Prolific. People who are paid survey-takers might differ from a sample recruited through other means.
These are very minor points. Overall, this paper makes an important contribution.
Author Response
I am very glad to see this research on the "pet effect," and I hope this paper will inspire additional work. I appreciate the effort to get more granular with the analysis. The play angle is an ideal beginning.
Our sincere thanks for your helpful comments, and kind interest in contributing to this study.
Comment 1: I have two suggestions for strengthening the paper. First, say something in the abstract about the use of statistical methods. I accepted the review invitation thinking this was a qualitative paper, and then I saw regression analysis only after I was committed.
Response 1: The abstract was submitted separately rather than as part of the main manuscript. This has now been corrected so the abstract appears in the appropriate format in the full manuscript. We have also added in ‘quantitative’ to the abstract when describing the current study (line 12).
Comment 2: Second, discuss in section 4.1 that you recruited participants through Prolific. People who are paid survey-takers might differ from a sample recruited through other means.
Response 2: We have now added in to the participants subsection that participants were recruited via Prolific (line 165). We have also acknowledged the Prolific sample as a limitation of the study in the discussion section (lines 451-453).
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThank you for addressing my concerns.
