Adaptation of the Pet Bereavement Questionnaire for European Portuguese Speakers

Abstract

The loss or death of a beloved pet creates a grief reaction comparable to that of the loss of a family member and may lead to the development of symptoms consistent with a diagnosis of persistent complicated grief disorder. Nevertheless, society does not always recognize it as a significant loss, which may contribute to bereaved owners feeling isolated and ashamed when coping with it, as well as not resorting to mental health professionals when necessary. The development of instruments to assess these reactions may contribute to improving the understanding of this suffering. This study aimed to adapt the Pet Bereavement Questionnaire for European Portuguese speakers. A non-probabilistic convenience sample of 169 adults who had a pet that died answered a battery of questionnaires, which included the Portuguese version of the Pet Bereavement Questionnaire. This version resulted from a consensus translation prepared by two translators and subsequently subjected to a cognitive debriefing. The Portuguese version of the instrument demonstrated good reliability (good internal consistency for the total questionnaire and for its subscales) and good external validity (negative correlation with well-being measures and positive correlation with psychopathology measures), as well as reasonable internal validity and sensitivity.