The Importance of Client–Canine Contact in Canine-Assisted Interventions: A Randomized Controlled Trial
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Researchers have claimed that canine-assisted interventions (CAIs) contribute significantly to bolstering participants' wellbeing, yet the mechanisms within interactions have received little empirical attention. The aim of this study was to assess the impact of client–canine contact on wellbeing outcomes in a sample of 284 undergraduate college students (77% female; 21% male, 2% non-binary). Participants self-selected to participate and were randomly assigned to one of two canine interaction treatment conditions (touch or no touch) or to a handler-only condition with no therapy dog present. To assess self-reports of wellbeing, measures of flourishing, positive and negative affect, social connectedness, happiness, integration into the campus community, stress, homesickness, and loneliness were administered. Exploratory analyses were conducted to assess whether these wellbeing measures could be considered as measuring a unidimensional construct. This included both reliability analysis and exploratory factor analysis. Based on the results of these analyses we created a composite measure using participant scores on a latent factor. We then conducted the tests of the four hypotheses using these factor scores. Results indicate that participants across all conditions experienced enhanced wellbeing on several measures; however, only those in the direct contact condition reported significant improvements on all measures of wellbeing. Additionally, direct interactions with therapy dogs through touch elicited greater wellbeing benefits than did no touch/indirect interactions or interactions with only a dog handler. Similarly, analyses using scores on the wellbeing factor indicated significant improvement in wellbeing across all conditions (handler-only, d = 0.18, p = 0.041; indirect, d = 0.38, p < 0.001; direct, d = 0.78, p < 0.001), with more benefit when a dog was present (d = 0.20, p < 0.001), and the most benefit coming from physical contact with the dog (d = 0.13, p = 0.002). The findings hold implications for post-secondary wellbeing programs as well as the organization and delivery of CAIs.
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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 | 0.007 | 0.013 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.005 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.012 | 0.001 |
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".