What the literature tells us about score sheet design

By Philippe Bugnon - Maike Heimann - Michaela Thallmair - H Golledge - P Jirkof

Score sheets are an essential tool of animal welfare. They allow transparent assessments to be made of animal health and behavior during animal experiments and they define interventions when deviations from normal status are detected. As such, score sheets help to refine animal experiments as part of the 3R (replacement, reduction and refinement) concept. This mini review aims at summarizing the scarce literature available on score sheet design.