professionals prior to release . Participants who completed the questionnaire were asked to select clinical signs of OA from a list of behaviours . The list of behaviours included key clinical signs of OA as determined by the literature , combined with clinical signs of chronic kidney disease as well as non-specific normal behaviours of cats .
Calculation of awareness score
To calculate the awareness score , each owner was awarded a mark for correctly identifying the clinical signs of OA . Any incorrect answers resulted in owners losing a mark . This resulted in an awareness score ranging from – 16 to 16 .
Participants
The questionnaire was open to all cat owners in the UK over the age of 18 years . The questionnaire was distributed via social media , targeting cat owner groups on Facebook .
It was deemed that 246 participants were required , following a sample size calculation based on 100,000 cat owners , with confidence levels of 95 %, and the sample proportion was estimated to be 20 %.
Data analysis
IBM SPSS was used for statistical analysis . Statistical significance was determined at p ≤ 0.05 . Spearman ' s test , Mann – Whitney test , Kruskal – Wallis test and t-test were also used .
Ethical considerations
Consent was required from all participants . Participants were fully informed about the use of their data ( including personal data ) and their right to withdraw from the study at any time . Data were handled in accordance with General Data Protection Regulation ( GDPR ) 2018 .
Participants could submit their email address if they wanted to enter a prize draw for a £ 50 gift voucher .
The study was granted ethical approval by the RVC Ethics and Welfare Committee , SSRERB ( URN SR2020-0284 ).
Results
Of the 375 participants who answered the questionnaire , 107 ( 28.5 %) currently owned one cat and 262 ( 69.9 %) owned two or more cats . The remaining 6 participants ( 1.6 %) had previously owned cats .
Awareness of OA
Owner awareness scores ranged from – 4 to 8 . The overall awareness score was normally distributed and had a mean of 4 ( standard deviation ( SD ) = 2 ).
Participants were generally able to correctly identify the age at which cats are likely to develop OA , with 205 ( 54.7 %) suggesting it was cats between 6 and 9 years old , and 138 ( 36.8 %) stating it was cats over 10 years old that were likely to develop the disease .
Hypothesis 1 : Age of cats
The age of the cats owned by participants in the study ranged from 1 to 24 years old , with a median age of 6 years old . This was not normally distributed .
Owner awareness scores were correlated with the age of the cats and were found not to be statistically significant , with a correlation coefficient of 0.09 ( p = 0.07 ). This implies that owner awareness is not likely to be affected by the ages of the cats they own .
Hypothesis 2 : Diagnosis of OA
Of the 375 participants , 4 failed to answer whether their cat had been diagnosed with OA . Of the remaining 371 participants , 336 ( 90.6 %) did not own or had never previously owned a cat diagnosed with OA , and 35 ( 9.4 %) of participants owned a cat with OA .
Participants with no experience of owning a cat diagnosed with OA scored between – 4 and 8 for awareness , with a median score of 4 . Participants who had owned a cat diagnosed with OA had awareness scores ranging from – 1 to 7 , with a median of 5 .
The Mann – Whitney test indicated that this was not a statistically significant difference ( p = 0.08 ), implying that awareness of OA was not likely to be reliant on the owner having owned a cat diagnosed with OA .
Hypothesis 3 : Previous knowledge of OA in cats
Of the 375 participants , 374 indicated whether they had any previous knowledge of OA in cats . Of these , 314 ( 84 %) stated they did not have previous knowledge of OA , and these participants had a mean awareness score of 4 ( SD = 2 ).
This was compared to 60 ( 16 %) participants who did have a previous knowledge of OA , and who had a mean owner awareness score of 4 ( SD = 2 ).
A t-test showed that this was not statistically significant ( p = 0.11 ) and indicated that reported prior knowledge of OA did not lead to a higher awareness score .
24 Veterinary Nursing Journal