The effect of pet therapy on the physiological and subjective stress response: A meta‐analysis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Studies have reported that exposure to pet therapy (PT) can reduce physiological and subjective stress and anxiety levels. The aim of this meta-analysis is to examine the efficacy of PT as a method for reducing physiological stress levels (blood pressure and heart rate) and subjective stress and anxiety scores (self-reported stress/anxiety). Further, we examined the effects of sample characteristics and modifications to the PT (different age groups and health status of participants across samples, whether a stressor was present, and individual versus group PT) as potential moderators of the relationship between PT and stress reactivity. Our searches incorporated articles published from May 2017 and earlier in PsycINFO, MEDLINE, and PubMed. This meta-analysis included 28 articles with 34 independent samples and contained a total of 1,310 participants. Using a random effects model, we determined that significant differences occurred in heart rate, self-reported anxiety, and self-reported stress after PT exposure compared with before PT. However, we did not detect significant differences in blood pressure after PT. Sample characteristics and modifications to the PT significantly moderated the effect of PT on stress responses. Our results suggest that PT can be an effective program for reducing stress reactivity.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.012 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.010 | 0.018 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".