Arab Children's Attitudes toward Companion Animalsin Israel
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Abstract
Many children develop empathy and positive attitudes toward animals, particularly domesticated pets. Some adopt a pet or companion animal. This article explores how these positive attitudes recreated, and the role of factors such as parents' education, socioeconomic status (SES),gender, and age. It is hypothesizedthatpersonal experiences such as raising companion animals or creating emotional identification with animals through children's stories contribute to development of positive attitudes toward animals.
The study participants were 267 children, male and female, 7–9 years of age, randomly sampled from 25 Arabic language elementary schools in Israel. This is the first study conductedon this topic among this population. Participants responded toa questionnaireon the research topic and background variables.
The results confirm the hypotheses thatthere is a statistical correlation between being guardians forcompanion animals or reading stories about animals, and expressing positive attitudes toward companion animals, whileparents' education, SES, gender, and age have minor effects.