From Behavioural Observation to Meaningful Measures

Organisers

 Femke Schaafstra, Manon de Kort, and Lenny van Erp (HAS green academy, Research Group Animal Welfare and Technology, Den Bosch, The Netherlands)

Summary

Assessing animal welfare requires researchers to draw inferences about an animal’s internal state from measurable indicators, with behaviour offering an important source of such information (Asher et al., 2009). Behavioural approaches to welfare assessment have traditionally concentrated on indicators of negative welfare, including pain, stress and abnormal behaviour, while positive behaviours, such as play and anticipation, have received increasing attention (Asher et al., 2009). This reflects a broader development in animal welfare science towards positive welfare, which considers a good life to involve more than simply avoiding negative experiences (Lawrence et al., 2019). Recent approaches therefore consider opportunities for positive affective engagement and for animals to exercise agency through choice and control (Littlewood et al., 2023). Translating these concepts into measurable behavioural indicators remains challenging. The welfare significance of an observed behaviour may depend on its context, underlying motivation, and the individual animal. Individual differences are particularly relevant: animals with different coping characteristics can show different behavioural and physiological responses to the same environmental challenge (Ruis et al., 2001). Consequently, observing and quantifying behaviour does not automatically provide a valid measure of positive welfare. Moving from what an animal does to what this behaviour tells us about its welfare state therefore remains an important methodological challenge. This workshop addresses the central question: what should we measure, and what evidence is needed before observable behaviour can be interpreted as an indicator of positive animal welfare?

Format

In this 90-minute interactive workshop, we will explore how behavioural observations can be translated into valid indicators of positive welfare, using examples from ongoing research with dogs and horses. A short introduction (20 minutes) will use research on dog–owner match and mismatch to illustrate differences between owner perceptions and systematic behavioural assessment, followed by video observations of horses to demonstrate the distinction between observing behaviour and interpreting welfare. Participants will then work in small groups using video material and the framework Observe → Interpret → Measure → Challenge → Validate. They will identify candidate behaviours, operationalise these into measurable variables, consider their possible relationship with dimensions of positive welfare, explore alternative explanations, and discuss how proposed indicators could be validated. Groups will share their ideas through a poster-based gallery walk and prioritise promising measures using dot voting, followed by a plenary discussion.

The workshop aims to critically examine the methodological steps from behavioural observation to welfare inference, rather than establish a fixed list of positive welfare behaviours. It concludes with the central question: What evidence is needed before observable behaviour can validly be interpreted as an indicator of positive animal welfare?