ANTHROZOÖS VOLUME 29, ISSUE 4 REPRINTS AVAILABLE PHOTOCOPYING © ISAZ 2016 PP. 611–625 DIRECTLY FROM PERMITTED PRINTED IN THE UK THE PUBLISHERS BY LICENSE ONLY Address for correspondence: Amy Fitzgerald, Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminology, 401 Sunset Avenue, Windsor, Ontario, Canada, N9B 3P4. E-mail: afitz@uwindsor.ca 611 Anthrozoös DOI: 10.1080/08927936.2016.1228760 Development of the Partner’s Treatment of Animals Scale Amy Fitzgerald * , Betty Barrett † , Rachael Shwom ‡ , Rochelle Stevenson * and Elena Chernyak # * Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminology, Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research, University of Windsor, Canada † Women’s and Gender Studies, University of Windsor, Canada ‡ Department of Human Ecology, Rutgers University, USA # Department of Sociology, Hartwick College, USA ABSTRACT Although studies of the relationship between animal abuse and intimate partner violence have proliferated in recent years, building upon pre- vious work and making cross-study comparisons have been rendered difficult by the utilization of differing operationalizations of animal maltreatment within this literature. This paper aims to mitigate this problem by introducing and de- tailing a scale of animal maltreatment by romantic partners, developed and tested with a sample of 55 women in domestic violence shelters who self- identified as victims of intimate partner violence. The Partner’s Treatment of An- imals Scale (PTAS) is comprised of five scales (emotional animal abuse, threats to harm animals, animal neglect, physical animal abuse, and severe physical animal abuse) that have strong demonstrated reliability. The construction of the scales is presented in this paper, and recommendations are made for employing the PTAS in subsequent studies. Keywords: animal abuse, animal maltreatment, intimate partner violence, Partner’s Treatment of Animals Scale, scale construction Research on intimate partner violence (IPV) has revealed a strong connection between the abuse of human family members and the maltreatment of companion animals. 1 Many people form very close bonds with companion animals, viewing them as members of the family (Cain 1985; Veevers 1985; Arluke and Sanders 1996; Sanders 1999; Irvine 2004) and as important sources of support and love (Sable 1995; Beck and Madresh 2008). For women experiencing violence at the hands of an intimate partner, the love and support from a companion animal may be the only positive relationship they have left (Flynn, 2000a, 2000b; Fitzgerald 2005; Faver and Strand 2007). Animal abuse in this context can be extremely traumatic for the people who love the animal victim, not to mention the deleterious impacts it has on the animals involved. ❖