An Examination of Dog Ownership in the Promotion of Walking as a Form of Physical Activity and Its Effects on Physical and Psychological Health
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The low percentage of Canadian adults who are sufficiently active is of concern in light of the detrimental health consequences associated with insufficient physical activity.Two studies were conducted in order to explore dog walking as a means of obtaining physical activity and the possible health benefits from dog walking.In Study 1, dog walking was examined from three perspectives through a week-long study of 61 regular dog walkers.First, summary statistics revealed that slightly more than half of the time spent dog walking was at a moderate-to vigorous-intensity physical activity (MVPA1) level and approximately 2 in 5 dog owners met the Canadian physical activity guideline through dog walking alone.Second, analyses revealed that an important factor affecting time spent dog walking at a MVPA1 level is the size of the dog, as it is a factor that individuals who are acquiring a dog can take into consideration.Another key finding was that all of the dog walkers reported that they walk their dog for its well-being, which indicates that dog walking is a purposeful physical activity.This suggests that dog walking should be promoted in terms of its benefits for the dog.Third, analyses comparing dog walkers' psychological health before and after their dog walks revealed an improvement on six out of seven psychological health measures.In Study 2, results from an 8-month longitudinal study revealed that, as hypothesized, participants who acquired a dog (n = 17) increased their MVPA1 from baseline to 8 months, while there was no change in the control group (n = 28).Contrary to expectations, although individuals in the acquired-dog group became more active over time, they did not experience any improvements in their physical or psychological health over the course of the study relative to the control group.Taken together, these findings suggest that promoting dog iii walking may be one way of increasing physical activity.The short-term health benefits that occur after dog walking need to be explored further, while the possible long-term health benefits need to be examined using a larger sample over a longer time frame.helpful feedback were appreciated.I would also like to thank Dr. Connie Kristiansen for fostering my interest in examining the ways in which pets affect people's health.Furthermore, I would like to thank Dr. Rachel Colley and Dr. John Zelenski for their invaluable advice as I encountered challenges throughout the thesis process.Finally, I am indebted to Dr. Andrea Howard for her assistance regarding statistical matters.My thesis would not have been possible without the unconditional support provided by my wonderful parents who encouraged
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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 | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 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".