A Measurement Equivalence Study of English and Spanish Versions of the Family Bondedness Scale

Background

The purpose of the current research was to translate the Family Bondedness Scale (FBS), a recently developed scale for measuring the extent to which pet owners are emotionally bonded with their pets in a manner commensurate with their emotional bondedness with human family members, into Spanish and test the measurement equivalence, or measurement invariance, of scores from the English and Spanish versions.

Objective

This study was intended to address the need for Spanish versions of human-animal interaction (HAI) and human-animal bond (HAB) measures given the rapid increase in Latinx pet owning families in the United States.

Methods

The FBS was first translated from English to Spanish using the back translation method. A measurement equivalence study was then conducted. A total of 732 responses on the FBS were obtained, 511 on the English version and 221 on the Spanish version. Readability analyses suggested both versions require a second grade reading level. Multi-Group Confirmatory Factor Analyses, with and without covariates, were used to test for three forms of measurement equivalence: configural, metric, and scalar.

Results

Results were consistent with full configural and full metric invariance, and with partial scalar invariance. The results suggested the item intercepts of seven FBS items were not the same for the two versions. Further analyses suggested the practical importance of the lack of full scalar invariance of these seven items was minimal. Results were also consistent with the equivalence of reliabilities of scores on the two versions. These findings support the use of the Spanish version of the FBS in HAI and HAB research. The results also have implications for future research on the Spanish version of the FBS.

Conclusion

This study provides evidence supporting use of the Spanish version of the FBS with US Spanish speaking pet owners. Given the growing number of Latinx pet owners in the United States, it is important to have a measurement scale to measure family bondedness for Spanish speaking pet owners. As far as the authors are aware, the FBS is the only measure of the degree to which pet owners feel their pet to be as much a part of their family as other human family members. Thus, the FBS is currently the only option for those needing to measure the degree of family bondedness not only with English speaking pet owners but also with Spanish speaking pet owners.