Interobserver reliability of the ‘Welfare Quality® Animal Welfare Assessment Protocol for Growing Pigs’

Abstract

The present paper focuses on evaluating the interobserver reliability of the ‘Welfare Quality® Animal Welfare Assessment Protocol for Growing Pigs’. The protocol for growing pigs mainly consists of a Qualitative Behaviour Assessment (QBA), direct behaviour observations (BO) carried out by instantaneous scan sampling and checks for different individual parameters (IP), e.g. presence of tail biting, wounds and bursitis. Three trained observers collected the data by performing 29 combined assessments, which were done at the same time and on the same animals; but they were carried out completely independent of each other. The findings were compared by the calculation of Spearman Rank Correlation Coefficients (RS), Intraclass Correlation Coefficients (ICC), Smallest Detectable Changes (SDC) and Limits of Agreements (LoA). There was no agreement found concerning the adjectives belonging to the QBA (e.g. active: RS: 0.50, ICC: 0.30, SDC: 0.38, LoA: −0.05 to 0.45; fearful: RS: 0.06, ICC: 0.0, SDC: 0.26, LoA: −0.20 to 0.30). In contrast, the BO showed good agreement (e.g. social behaviour: RS: 0.45, ICC: 0.50, SDC: 0.09, LoA: −0.09 to 0.03 use of enrichment material: RS: 0.75, ICC: 0.68, SDC: 0.06, LoA: −0.03 to 0.03). Overall, observers agreed well in the IP, e.g. tail biting (RS: 0.52, ICC: 0.88; SDC: 0.05, LoA: −0.01 to 0.02) and wounds (RS: 0.43, ICC: 0.59, SDC: 0.10, LoA: −0.09 to 0.10). The parameter bursitis showed great differences (RS: 0.10, ICC: 0.0, SDC: 0.35, LoA: −0.37 to 0.40), which can be explained by difficulties in the assessment when the animals moved around quickly or their legs were soiled. In conclusion, the interobserver reliability was good in the BO and most IP, but not for the parameter bursitis and the QBA.

Test−Retest Reliability of the ‘Welfare Quality® Animal Welfare Assessment Protocol for Sows and Piglets’. Part 1. Assessment of the Welfare Principle of ‘Appropriate Behavior’

“…For the evaluation of reliability, the use of a variety of reliability and agreement parameters is advised by de Vet et al [20] to strengthen the advantages of the parameters and to compensate for possible disadvantages as the interpretation of only one parameter can end up in misinterpretation. The statistical parameters used in the present study were chosen with regard to welfare-related reliability studies which have been performed by Czycholl et al [29,30] and Temple et al [10]. In terms of the comparability of the studies, it is suitable to use the same statistical parameters.…”

“…However, the subjective definition of threshold values remains somewhat difficult. For this reason, the threshold values of the present study were oriented towards existing reliability studies [10,16,29,30] and defined as advised by de Vet et al [20].…”

Test–retest reliability of the Welfare Quality Assessment protocol for pigs applied to sows and piglets. Part 2. Assessment of the principles good feeding, good housing, and good health1

“…The IN with prevalence smaller than 0.05% were not analyzed with regard to their test-retest reliability because a low prevalence could bias the interpretation of reliability of these indicators (Czycholl et al, 2016a). A detailed discussion on IN with poor test-retest reliability is carried out in the following.…”

“HerdGPS-Preprocessor”—A Tool to Preprocess Herd Animal GPS Data; Applied to Evaluate Contact Structures in Loose-Housing Horses

“…Reference [ 44 ] have proven that even scan sampling with intervals of 30 or 60 min was not an accurate technique for measuring behaviours compared to continuous observation. In addition, with field observations the results might be affected by the presence of the human observer [ 60 ]. GPS data could therefore, be seen as technically superior when it comes to outdoor observations of a large groups of animals [ 61 ], and has also increasingly been used in ethological studies [ 62 ].…”