A prospective study of mental wellbeing, quality of life, human-animal attachment, and grief among foster caregivers at animal shelters

Lauren Powell; Roxy Ackerman; Chelsea L. Reinhard; James Serpell; Brittany Watson

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0301661

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionOctober 20, 2023
3 Jan 2024 Decision Letter - I Anna S Olsson, Editor PONE-D-23-34226A prospective study of mental wellbeing, quality of life, the human-animal bond, and grief among foster caregivers at animal sheltersPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Powell, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. Your submission has been reviewed and I invite you to consider the reviewer comments, which you will find below. I'm asking you to pay special attention to the reviewer's first comment, about which responses are included in the analysis. For the various suggestions for including additional factors in the analysis, please consider them. Please submit your revised manuscript by Feb 17 2024 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'. If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, I Anna S Olsson, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal requirements: When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. 1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf 2. Note from Emily Chenette, Editor in Chief of PLOS ONE, and Iain Hrynaszkiewicz, Director of Open Research Solutions at PLOS: Did you know that depositing data in a repository is associated with up to a 25% citation advantage (https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0230416)? If you’ve not already done so, consider depositing your raw data in a repository to ensure your work is read, appreciated and cited by the largest possible audience. You’ll also earn an Accessible Data icon on your published paper if you deposit your data in any participating repository (https://plos.org/open-science/open-data/#accessible-data). 3. Thank you for stating the following financial disclosure: “The study was funded by Nestlé Purina PetCare Global Resources, Inc. The Arnall Family Foundation provided salary support for L.P. and the Bernice Barbour Foundation provided salary support for C.L.R.” Please state what role the funders took in the study. If the funders had no role, please state: "The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript." If this statement is not correct you must amend it as needed. Please include this amended Role of Funder statement in your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. 4. In the online submission form, you indicated that [Data cannot be shared publicly because of our data sharing agreements with the animal shelters. Data are available from the principal author on request.]. All PLOS journals now require all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript to be freely available to other researchers, either 1. In a public repository, 2. Within the manuscript itself, or 3. Uploaded as supplementary information. This policy applies to all data except where public deposition would breach compliance with the protocol approved by your research ethics board. If your data cannot be made publicly available for ethical or legal reasons (e.g., public availability would compromise patient privacy), please explain your reasons on resubmission and your exemption request will be escalated for approval. 5. Please include captions for your Supporting Information files at the end of your manuscript, and update any in-text citations to match accordingly. Please see our Supporting Information guidelines for more information: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/supporting-information. 6. Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Partly ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: No ****** 3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: No ****** 4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 5. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: This manuscript describes a study exploring the impact of fostering animals on caregivers' mental wellbeing and quality of life. The introduction provides useful background information, and I find that publishing the “negative result” that fostering animals does not significantly improve caregivers' mental wellbeing – as measured by positive affect – is worthwhile, as it is an important consideration for those interested in fostering based on that assumption. The contrast with the self-perceived increase in mental wellbeing is also an interesting result. There are, however, a few issues to be addressed before this study can be published. These include the following: • The study examines positive and negative affect, quality of life, and grief, considering human-animal attachment in the sample which is of considerable size (N=131) but subjected to high (>50%) attrition, which can potentially bias the results. This is adequately addressed, but it is not clear whether the authors only analysed and made comparisons based on the 63 participants that completed the study, and this should be clarified. For example, in table 1 a N=121 is reported for data comprising the three time-points, which makes no sense, given only 63 participants finished the study. Same for table 2, in which an n=72 is reported. In any case, any analysis concerning the impact of fostering animals should be pair-wise, and should thus exclude drop-outs. In that regard, demographics on the relevant sample (those who completed the study) should be provided. Moreover, these results are best analysed by a repeated measures test, which would have the benefit of having more statistical power, yet although it is claimed in ln 287 that this is the case, no repeated measures tests are described in the methods section. Also regarding statistical reporting, it is not acceptable to report any non-statistical difference as a difference. Either there is a statistically significant difference, for the predefined alpha (in this case I’m assuming it is .05 before corrections) or there is no difference. • The authors report that out of the 6 caregivers who reported to be somewhat or very unlikely to provide foster care, 3 of them had adopted their foster animals. I would exclude these from the analysis on this item. One thing is to have an experience as a foster and after returning the animals stating they do not want to do it again. Another thing altogether is to, after having experienced fostering an animal, keeping that animal. This means that the foster had a positive experience, rather than a negative one. • I could not find the comparison in QoL tests between before, during and after the fostering experience. Where is that reported in the text? • In the difference in reported QoL between dog and cat fosters, it would be interesting to explore more possible causes, even if speculatively Possible causes that come to mind are the different degrees (and/or kind) of interaction with humans between the two species, or the fact that dogs must be walked and this results in fosters doing more exercise and interact with their environment , which might have an effect on QoL. • Another thing that is not explored as a cause for reduced positive affect from fostering (but not between the “before” and “during” time-points) is the loss of the animal itself, after the fostering period, as this might take a toll. The high number of fosters experiencing grief may be an indicator, and it would be interesting to use it as a factor in the analysis. • Another thing that might be useful is to break the data on the PANAS and DOQOL for the difference species fostered, as there may be an effect in this regard. • Another key issue to address is the lack of raw data, which should be submitted, according to best practice. ****** 6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: No ******** [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0301661.r001
Revision 1
4 Mar 2024 Author Response Reviewer #1: This manuscript describes a study exploring the impact of fostering animals on caregivers' mental wellbeing and quality of life. The introduction provides useful background information, and I find that publishing the “negative result” that fostering animals does not significantly improve caregivers' mental wellbeing – as measured by positive affect – is worthwhile, as it is an important consideration for those interested in fostering based on that assumption. The contrast with the self-perceived increase in mental wellbeing is also an interesting result. Thank you for your time and effort reviewing our manuscript. There are, however, a few issues to be addressed before this study can be published. These include the following: 1. The study examines positive and negative affect, quality of life, and grief, considering human-animal attachment in the sample which is of considerable size (N=131) but subjected to high (>50%) attrition, which can potentially bias the results. This is adequately addressed, but it is not clear whether the authors only analysed and made comparisons based on the 63 participants that completed the study, and this should be clarified. For example, in table 1 a N=121 is reported for data comprising the three time-points, which makes no sense, given only 63 participants finished the study. Same for table 2, in which an n=72 is reported. In any case, any analysis concerning the impact of fostering animals should be pair-wise, and should thus exclude drop-outs. In that regard, demographics on the relevant sample (those who completed the study) should be provided. Moreover, these results are best analysed by a repeated measures test, which would have the benefit of having more statistical power, yet although it is claimed in ln 287 that this is the case, no repeated measures tests are described in the methods section. Also regarding statistical reporting, it is not acceptable to report any non-statistical difference as a difference. Either there is a statistically significant difference, for the predefined alpha (in this case I’m assuming it is .05 before corrections) or there is no difference. We use linear mixed models to analyze positive and negative affect. These models are commonly used for repeated measures as they can account for non-independence of measurements between timepoints. They also have the benefit of accommodating missing data points, meaning we do not need to exclude participants who have missing data at one or more time points, thus maximizing the sample size and reducing possible bias from pairwise deletion. We have added this information under ‘Statistical analysis’ in the methods for readers who are not familiar with linear mixed models. We have also added results describing the demographic characteristics between participants with complete datasets and those with missing data (lines 224-227). Table 2 reports quality of life data that was collected at timepoint 2 only (during care) as the survey asks about the impacts of the specific foster animal which could not be answered before or after care. We have added “completed during foster care (timepoint 2)” to the table heading to clarify this point. Regarding the statistical reporting, we have included both the effect size and p value as recommended (see Sullivan & Feinn, 2012). We have now added this citation to the methods section. We also double checked the results to ensure all nonsignificant differences are clearly described as such. 2. The authors report that out of the 6 caregivers who reported to be somewhat or very unlikely to provide foster care, 3 of them had adopted their foster animals. I would exclude these from the analysis on this item. One thing is to have an experience as a foster and after returning the animals stating they do not want to do it again. Another thing altogether is to, after having experienced fostering an animal, keeping that animal. This means that the foster had a positive experience, rather than a negative one. We agree with the reviewer that the experiences of individuals who are unlikely to foster in the future due to adoption may differ from those who had negative experiences. However, the question was not designed as a proxy measure for whether the foster experience was positive or negative. We were interested in learning about retention of foster caregivers and it appears adoption is a key reason affecting one’s willingness to foster in the future which is important for shelters to consider when developing and managing a foster program. We did exclude the participants from the further analysis looking at willingness to foster based on foster characteristics. However, ultimately this is not included in the final paper as the sample size was too small so we removed the results (see lines 304-307). 3. I could not find the comparison in QoL tests between before, during and after the fostering experience. Where is that reported in the text? Please see our response to comment 1 above, and Figure 2. We have also added “(time point 2)” to the methods section describing the QoL scale and when it was completed to clarify this point. 4. In the difference in reported QoL between dog and cat fosters, it would be interesting to explore more possible causes, even if speculatively Possible causes that come to mind are the different degrees (and/or kind) of interaction with humans between the two species, or the fact that dogs must be walked and this results in fosters doing more exercise and interact with their environment , which might have an effect on QoL. We have now added several sentences to the discussion describing possible differences in the degree and nature of human-animal interactions between species, with a particular focus on the possible role of dog-walking as a means of boosting mood and QoL (lines 326-331 and 353-357). 5. Another thing that is not explored as a cause for reduced positive affect from fostering (but not between the “before” and “during” time-points) is the loss of the animal itself, after the fostering period, as this might take a toll. The high number of fosters experiencing grief may be an indicator, and it would be interesting to use it as a factor in the analysis. We have added an exploration of the possible role of grief in reducing positive affect post-foster to the discussion (lines 324-326). However, we have not included grief as a factor in the analysis as the adapted scale hasn’t been validated for use as a single, composite measure. The scale was included in this study for descriptive purposes only as the length of validated pet grief surveys prevented their inclusion. We have suggested in the discussion (lines 389-391) that future researchers could investigate the impact of grief on measures of positive and negative affect relative to foster caregiving using a validated measure of pet grief in the discussion. 6. Another thing that might be useful is to break the data on the PANAS and DOQOL for the difference species fostered, as there may be an effect in this regard. The differences in DOQOL based on species are described in the second paragraph of the ‘Foster caregiver quality of life’ section of the results. We have now included foster species and an interaction term between foster species and time point in the PANAS models which revealed differences between dog and cat foster caregivers (see 'Foster caregiver affect' under the results). These results have also been described in the discussion (lines 323-331). 7. Another key issue to address is the lack of raw data, which should be submitted, according to best practice. The dataset has now been uploaded to a public data repository. DOI: 10.5061/dryad.5mkkwh7d6. For the purpose of peer review, the data can be accessed at https://datadryad.org/stash/share/foh-FWULRD3e2yxbVE4LDzNZZC1jvNpDW6XYee6CBKc. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewer-v3.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0301661.r002
21 Mar 2024 Decision Letter - I Anna S Olsson, Editor A prospective study of mental wellbeing, quality of life, human-animal attachment, and grief among foster caregivers at animal shelters PONE-D-23-34226R1 Dear Dr. Powell, We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication. An invoice will be generated when your article is formally accepted. Please note, if your institution has a publishing partnership with PLOS and your article meets the relevant criteria, all or part of your publication costs will be covered. Please make sure your user information is up-to-date by logging into Editorial Manager at Editorial Manager® and clicking the ‘Update My Information' link at the top of the page. If you have any questions relating to publication charges, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. Kind regards, I Anna S Olsson, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0301661.r003
Formally Accepted
25 Apr 2024 Acceptance Letter - I Anna S Olsson, Editor PONE-D-23-34226R1 PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Powell, I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now being handed over to our production team. At this stage, our production department will prepare your paper for publication. This includes ensuring the following: * All references, tables, and figures are properly cited * All relevant supporting information is included in the manuscript submission, * There are no issues that prevent the paper from being properly typeset If revisions are needed, the production department will contact you directly to resolve them. If no revisions are needed, you will receive an email when the publication date has been set. At this time, we do not offer pre-publication proofs to authors during production of the accepted work. Please keep in mind that we are working through a large volume of accepted articles, so please give us a few weeks to review your paper and let you know the next and final steps. Lastly, if your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. If we can help with anything else, please email us at customercare@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. I Anna S Olsson Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0301661.r004

Open letter on the publication of peer review reports

PLOS recognizes the benefits of transparency in the peer review process. Therefore, we enable the publication of all of the content of peer review and author responses alongside final, published articles. Reviewers remain anonymous, unless they choose to reveal their names.

We encourage other journals to join us in this initiative. We hope that our action inspires the community, including researchers, research funders, and research institutions, to recognize the benefits of published peer review reports for all parts of the research system.

Learn more at ASAPbio .