Dog Food Preference and Reinforcer Assessment Data from Observational Study

A study comparing informal observational assessments of dog food preferences to formal behavioral tests. Data includes rankings from live observers, undergraduate video observers, and professional behaviorists. The dataset, authored by Erica Feuerbacher and last updated in May 2026, is associated with research on simplifying reinforcer identification for dog owners.

Use Cases

• Comparing the predictive value of live versus video-based observational assessments for canine preferences.
• Analyzing agreement between informal owner observations and formal behavioral assessments for reinforcer identification.
• Investigating the impact of observer background (undergraduate vs. professional) on preference ranking accuracy.

Strengths

• Dataset is associated with a formal research study comparing three distinct observer groups.
• Available under a permissive CC0-1.0 public domain license.
• Includes data files in multiple formats (PDF, RTF, XLSX) for accessibility.

Limitations

• Row count and column-level documentation are unknown, limiting suitability assessment.
• The dataset is small in scale at 166.6 KB, indicating limited scope.
• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.

Provenance

Source

Erica Feuerbacher via figshare

Collection Method

Data likely collected from a controlled study involving dogs offered five different food items, with preferences ranked by observers.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-20 19:28:15; freshness should be verified.