Are temperament tests and behavior tests useful for predicting how a shelter dog will behave after adoption?

A study to be published in Applied Animal Behaviour Science suggests canine temperament tests and behavior assessments currently used in animal shelters have not undergone scientific evaluation for how well they predict a dog’s behaivor after adoption.

Even a protocol designed specifically to address this gap, the Behavioural Assessment for Re-homing K9’s (B.A.R.K.) protocol, was found to be weak in that ability.

From the study abstract:

This poses a significant welfare concern for shelter dogs; life and death decisions might be made based on invalid assessments of behaviour. The aim in this study was to develop a standardised shelter dog behaviour assessment, called the Behavioural Assessment for Re-homing K9’s (B.A.R.K.) protocol, implement it into an operational animal shelter and evaluate the reliability and predictive validity of the tool.

[…]

Amongst dogs that initially passed the test and were subsequently rehomed, the predictive validity of the protocol was also quite poor, with ‘fear’ (r = 0.42, n = 67, P < 0.01) and ‘friendliness’ (r = 0.49, n = 67, P < 0.01) being the only measures that proved to be predictive.

The results of the study imply that a standardised behavioural test may be of less value in identifying the suitability of dogs for placement in the community than is currently believed. If so, this has significant implications for how such tests are employed.

A lack of predictive validity means a dog who is actually dangerous may be placed for adoption, and a dog who would do perfectly well as a pet will not have that chance.

Mornement, K.M., Coleman, G.J., Toukhsati, S., Bennett, P.C.,Development of the Behavioural Assessment for Rehoming K9’s (B.A.R.K.) Protocol, Applied Animal Behaviour Science (2013),
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.applanim.2013.11.008