Three Things to Know
While humane education programs are believed to be effective in improving primary school children’s animal welfare knowledge, rigorous evaluations of their effectiveness remain crucial. Researchers employed several standardized scales — including the Pet Attitude Scale, the Short Attachment to Pets Scale for Children and Young People, and the Child-BAM measure — to assess the impact of the Scottish SPCA’s program.
The study revealed that the program significantly improved primary school children’s understanding of animal welfare and the work of the Scottish SPCA.
However, changes in attitudes towards animals and attachment to pets were less pronounced. This likely reflects a pre-existing positive baseline and suggests that longer-term interventions are necessary for substantial shifts in these areas and related behaviors.
For Dog Welfare Practitioners
A key takeaway for humane education providers is the study’s clear indication that while knowledge acquisition can occur after a single session, influencing attitudes and behaviors requires sustained engagement. Consequently, offering ongoing sessions and workshops to foster behavioral change is crucial. Some humane societies have already implemented valuable initiatives like after-school homework clubs and periodic storytimes. More dog welfare advocates should consider establishing similar youth programs to amplify their impact.
Furthermore, standardizing the measurement of program effectiveness is essential. Existing valuable tools, such as the Primary Attitude Scale and the Animal Attitude Scale, offer a foundation for this. Organizations should proactively explore the integration of these instruments into their evaluation processes.
The Full Picture
Animals play an important role in children’s lives, offering emotional support, reducing anxiety, and fostering empathy. Children who form strong bonds with pets often show better mental health and greater concern for animal welfare. However, despite these benefits, animal neglect and abuse remain issues, partly due to children’s lack of knowledge rather than intentional cruelty.
Preventative, universal education programs targeting all children could address this gap by teaching about animal welfare needs, empathy, and attitudes toward animals. School-based animal welfare education programs have shown promise in improving children’s empathy, knowledge, and attitudes towards animals. However, these programs vary widely in content, delivery, and structure, and rigorous evaluation of their effectiveness is still needed.
The current study, titled “Assessing effectiveness of a nonhuman animal welfare education program for Primary School children”, aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of the Scottish SPCA’s “Prevention through Education” program.
Study Methods
Humane Education Program
Scottish SPCA’s “Prevention through Education” program reaches over 300,000 children annually in Scotland. The sessions, delivered by a Scottish SPCA staff member, included a 15-minute PowerPoint presentation with factual information, photographs, and videos, followed by an interactive activity or game, and a general Q&A session. There are four different workshops, each with a specific focus:
- Animal Friendly Citizens (AFC) emphasized community engagement and responsible behavior towards animals, using role-play activities.
- Wildlife Welfare (WW) highlighted the challenges faced by Scottish wildlife and human-wildlife conflicts, using educational board games and video clips.
- You and Your Pet (YYP) focused on pet care, ownership responsibilities, and hygiene, featuring a maze challenge game.
- Food and Farm Animal Welfare (FFAW) introduced topics related to farm animal welfare, food industries, and product labeling, using a fact-or-fiction game.
Each intervention is designed to improve children’s knowledge, empathy, attachment to animals, and beliefs about animals’ minds.
Participants
Program participants included 1,090 children from 22 primary schools (552 males and 538 females) with a mean age of 9.7 years (range 6.4–12.2 years). Children were mainly from two year groups: Primary 4 (ages 7–8) and Primary 6 (ages 10–11). Some schools had composite classes combining different year groups. All students participated in one of the four interventions.
The control group consisted of 127 children from three schools who had no prior involvement with Scottish SPCA programs. Due to scheduling constraints, only 447 children from seven intervention schools completed all three stages (pre-test, post-test, delayed post-test), while the control group completed only pre- and post-tests.
The control group consisted of 127 children from three schools who had no prior involvement with Scottish SPCA programs. Due to scheduling constraints, only 447 children from seven intervention schools completed all three stages (pre-test, post-test, delayed post-test), while the control group completed only pre- and post-tests.
Questionnaires
The study used a pre-test, post-test, and a delayed post-test (conducted six weeks later, after the summer holidays). It also compared participants to non-participants to assess the true impact of the workshops. The researchers predicted that each intervention would lead to significant improvements and that these improvements would be sustained.
The evaluation tool was a quantitative, child-friendly, paper-based questionnaire, designed for 7–13-year-olds. It assessed:
- Knowledge of Animal Welfare Needs, using a true/false format on nine statements.
- Knowledge of the Scottish SPCA, assessed through a 10-item Likert scale.
- Attitudes Toward Animals, adapted from the Pet Attitude Scale and divided into pet animals, wild animals, and farm animal sections.
- Attachment to Pets, measured by a nine-item Short Attachment to Pets Scale.
- Children’s Beliefs About Animal Minds (Child-BAM), assessing perceptions of animals’ cognitive and emotional capacities across different species.
The interventions were carried out over three consecutive school days. In intervention schools, children completed a pre-test on Day 1, participated in a one-hour interactive workshop on Day 2, and then completed a post-test on Day 3. In control schools, the same timeline was followed, but without the workshop. Teachers administered a self-complete questionnaire during class time at each stage.
Study Results
The study evaluated the Scottish SPCA’s Prevention through Education program and found overall positive outcomes, mainly in improving children’s knowledge about animal needs and the Scottish SPCA. Knowledge gains were found across all four interventions.
| Pre-Test | Post-Test | |
|---|---|---|
| Knowledge about animals (high score = high knowledge) | ||
| Animal Friendly Citizen | 3.5 | 4.9 |
| You and Your Pet | 4 | 6 |
| Wildlife Welfare | 3.4 | 4.9 |
| Food and Farm Animal | 3.6 | 4.5 |
| Control Group | 3.2 | 3.3 |
| Attitudes towards animals (low score = positive attitudes) | ||
| Animal Friendly Citizen | 1.69 | 1.68 |
| You and Your Pet | 1.69 | 1.67 |
| Wildlife Welfare | 1.7 | 1.69 |
| Food and Farm Animal | 1.69 | 1.67 |
| Control Group | 1.7 | 1.69 |
However, no significant changes were found in attitudes toward animals, despite slight positive trends. Possible reasons include the already high baseline attitudes (ceiling effect) and the short, one-hour workshop format.
Beliefs about animal minds (Child-BAM) only slightly improved after the interventions, particularly those emphasizing animal sentience and emotional engagement. However, activities that encouraged perspective-taking and emotional connection, like discussing animal pain, seemed effective.
| Pre-Test | Post-Test | |
|---|---|---|
| Children’s beliefs about animal minds (low score = high BAM) | ||
| Animal Friendly Citizen | 1.8 | 1.75 |
| You and Your Pet | 1.8 | 1.72 |
| Wildlife Welfare | 1.8 | 1.77 |
| Food and Farm Animal | 1.8 | 1.73 |
| Control Group | 1.8 | 1.78 |
Attachment to pets also increased slightly after the interventions but not significantly compared to controls, likely due to already high baseline attachment levels. Promoting strong attachment to animals remains important for preventing cruelty.
| Pre-Test | Post-Test | |
|---|---|---|
| Attachment to Animals (low score = high attachment) | ||
| Animal Friendly Citizen | 1.14 | 1.12 |
| You and Your Pet | 1.19 | 1.11 |
| Wildlife Welfare | 1.14 | 1.13 |
| Food and Farm Animal | 1.14 | 1.1 |
| Control Group | 1.15 | 1.13 |
Conclusion
The study shows that animal welfare education can fit into existing school curricula and positively impact knowledge and humane attitudes toward animals. Programs like the Scottish SPCA’s ‘Prevention through Education’ align well with national education frameworks and effective teaching practices. While one-off workshops can improve knowledge, longer-term interventions are likely needed to achieve lasting attitude and behavior changes. Future work should focus on building theory-driven, evidence-based education models to strengthen child-animal relationships and help prevent cruelty.
Miscellaneous
Data From Study:
Owned Dogs > Offering Better Care > Youth Education Programs
Year of Publication:
2017
External Link:
Hawkins, RD, Williams, JM & Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, SSPCA 2017, ‘Assessing effectiveness of a nonhuman animal welfare education program for Primary School children’, Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science, vol. 20, no. 3, pp. 240-256. https://doi.org/10.1080/10888705.2017.1305272