Effect of our mental health on dog behaviour?

[Sleepflower77]

Hi dog owners, I know how much we rely on our dogs for our mental wellbeing, but how does our psychological functioning affect them? I'm currently looking into the association between owner mental health and dog behaviour as part of my Master's degree, if you're also interested and want to be part of some new and interesting research I'd really appreciate it if you fill in my questionnaire:

docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd-UaBYGcmxF-fcINtKYkD2lj5HEU4708tat3NtCo4MJH3yKw/viewform?usp=sf_link​

It's entirely anonymous and there's an email address if you want more info or want to know your results. Thanks so much if you decide to do it

That was interesting. - no one has shown interest in some of those topics before but it speaks to the heart of the dog-human relationship.

Thank you! Yes I agree - there's very little existing research on this which is surprising as there is loads on the human-animal bond. I can't wait to analyse the results and write it up!

Love this. Hope your study goes well!

I have just filled in your questionnaire. Hope you get a good response. Are you going to publish the results?

Thank you so much!

Thanks it's really appreciated - yes I am hoping to get it published! I can also post the link to the paper here when it's done if people are still interested

Hello, this sounds very interesting and up my street, but I was a bit puzzled that you ask for my gender, but the dog’s sex? If you’d put gender for both I’d assume you were being prudish about using the word sex but the fact that you’ve put sex for the dog but gender for the human makes me wonder what you’re actually wanting to know, the sex of the human participant or how they identify? Is it not important to know the sex of the human participants (and possibly their gender identity) , seeing as mental health conditions and behaviours can be more common in one area of the population than others?

Hi, great point - dogs are always defined in terms of sex not gender and for the human participants in order to be inclusive I chose gender because I know some people are averse to humans being defined in terms of sex only, but yes biologically mental health problems can be affected by sex of a person. If my study was more focused on the basis of the mental health problems I would definitely have an option for both biological sex and gender preference, but as it is it's not a main variable. Thanks for the comment and supporting the research

Hi thanks for answering my question. Unfortunately using gender instead of sex is not inclusive of everyone, including many same sex-attracted people, non conforming people of either sex and women for whom gender is a regressive set of sexist ideas and rules. I personally don’t have a gender, I’m a woman by virtue of my sex (so I won’t take part).
I’m not sure from a research point of view why you need to know people’s gender, if you are simply going to end up with two, three or seventy six self identifying groups of mixed males and females. Do dogs really care what pronouns people use? If sex doesn’t matter in this context, why does gender?
I know this isn’t the focus of your study, but I think if you’re going to ask people their gender but not their sex you should have scientific reasons for doing so or simply not ask.
Good luck with your studies.

Really interesting study - you have my answers.

@Cyberworrier

Hi thanks for answering my question. Unfortunately using gender instead of sex is not inclusive of everyone, including many same sex-attracted people, non conforming people of either sex and women for whom gender is a regressive set of sexist ideas and rules. I personally don’t have a gender, I’m a woman by virtue of my sex (so I won’t take part). I’m not sure from a research point of view why you need to know people’s gender, if you are simply going to end up with two, three or seventy six self identifying groups of mixed males and females. Do dogs really care what pronouns people use? If sex doesn’t matter in this context, why does gender? I know this isn’t the focus of your study, but I think if you’re going to ask people their gender but not their sex you should have scientific reasons for doing so or simply not ask. Good luck with your studies.

Very well put.

Op you should just stick to sex, and add a gender identity question if you need to.