Adaptation and Validation of the Pet Bereavement Questionnaire (PBQ) for Chinese Population

• Published in: Animals (Basel) Vol. 14; no. 19; p. 2845
• Main Authors: Yiu, Winnie W Y, Cheung, H N, Wong, Paul W C
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 02-10-2024; MDPI
• Subjects: Adaptation; Analysis; Animal behavior; animal bereavement; Animals; Bereavement; companion animal; depression; Grief; Likert scale; loss; Mental depression; Pets; Post traumatic stress disorder; psychometric validation; Questionnaires; Stress (Psychology); Surveys; China; Hong Kong China; loss; companion animal; depression; psychometric validation; animal bereavement; grief
• ISSN: 2076-2615; 2076-2615
• DOI: 10.3390/ani14192845

Despite the increasing prevalence of pet ownership in Chinese societies, standardized tools to assess grief from pet loss remain lacking. Research predominantly focuses on Western populations, creating a gap in understanding pet bereavement in Chinese cultural settings. This study aimed to adapt and validate the Pet Bereavement Questionnaire (PBQ-C) for a Chinese context to create a culturally appropriate assessment tool. A total of 246 participants with companion animal loss experiences were recruited through the university of the research team. They were invited to complete an online survey including the PBQ-C, the Depression subscale of the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS-21), and the Inventory of Complicated Grief (ICG). Both Exploratory Factor Analysis and Confirmatory Factor Analysis were conducted to examine the psychometric properties of the PBQ-C and the findings supported a three-factor structure-grief, anger, and guilt-aligned with the original PBQ, with three items reassigned to different factors. Despite these adjustments, the PBQ-C demonstrated strong internal consistency, reflecting the reliability of the questionnaire in measuring the same construct across its items; split-half reliability, indicating its ability to produce consistent results when divided into two parts; and concurrent validity, showing that the PBQ-C correlates well with other established measures of grief. The validated PBQ-C provides a culturally sensitive tool for assessing pet bereavement in Chinese society that can promote research and counselling support for this under-researched and under-recognized type of loss of human-animal relationships.