Of 27 studies, 19 (70%) reported outcomes a quality of life measure with a total of 13 different standardized measures used. Included studies assessed psychosocial outcomes via standardized measures from assistance dogs that were trained for functional tasks related to a physical disability or medical condition (omitting psychiatric service dogs or emotional support dogs). A total of 13 mental health outcomes were assessed in which 4 (31%) were significant across group or condition. The three Rs are a set of principles that scientists are encouraged to follow in order to reduce the impact of research on animals. Marguerite E. OHaire, Affiliation: Data Availability: All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting information files. At this stage, articles were excluded if they were (1) non-English; (2) written for a magazine or other non-peer-reviewed source; (3) book reviews, book chapters, editorials, letters, or opinion papers that did not collect original data; (4) conference abstracts or proceedings; (5) studies assessing companion, therapy, or emotional support animals that were not trained for tasks or work related to a specific disability. For example, without any animal research, effective treatments for human conditions like Alzheimers disease may very well be found, but it would certainly take decades longer to find them, and in the meantime, millions and millions of additional people would suffer. However, when more than one few companies uses the same resources and provide competitive parity are also known as rare resources. Advantages Useful Findings. For example, the benefits of an assistance dog for a socially isolated individual who experiences periodic anxiety and depression may be significantly different than an individual without these characteristics. The process of animal model building, development and evaluation has rarely been addressed systematically, despite the long history of using animal models in the investigation of neuropsychiatric disorders and behavioral dysfunctions. [17] found better functioning among those with a mobility service dog compared to a control group. Animal research: Serving a vital role in psychological science. Using the Profile of Mood States Scale [POMS; 51], Guest found increased self-reported vigor 3- and 12-months after receiving a hearing dog and less fatigue 3-months after receiving a hearing dog. In addition, many studies did not account for confounding variables such as having a pet dog, the progressiveness or type of disability, or relationship status. This poses a severe threat to the validity of findings as group differences in outcomes could be caused by underlying differences in certain demographics or characteristics and cannot be confidently attributed to the presence of the assistance dog. Future research should focus on assessing outcomes from these medical alert and response assistance dogs and how their roles may be similar or different than mobility, guide, or hearing dogs. The remaining four longitudinal studies assessed participants 35 times with final follow-up ranging from 924 months after receiving an assistance dog. Case study advantages and disadvantages. Case Study Advantages and A health information specialist (JY) constructed and executed comprehensive search strategies in six electronic databases: MEDLINE (PubMed platform), Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL) (EBSCOhost platform), ERIC (EBSCOHost), Web of Science Core Collection (Web of Science), PsycINFO (EBSCOhost), and PsycARTICLES (EBSCOhost). Authors JG and KR independently coded 20% of the included articles to establish adequate inter-rater reliability (alpha = 0.822). Overall, studies addressed an average of 62% of methodological consideration items with a range of 23% (3/13) to 100% (15/15; denominators were variable as there were two items not applicable to all study designs). Studies were eligible for inclusion if they assessed outcomes from guide, hearing, medical, or mobility service dogs, if they collected original data on handlers psychosocial functioning, and if the outcome was measured quantitatively with a validated, standardized measure. Abstract. Second, there is inherent variation in both the quality and quantity of interactions from one assistance dog-owner pair to the next. Advancing psychology to benefit society and improve lives. However, other studies reported no relationship between having a mobility service dog and self-esteem via the RSES [39, 41] or other standardized measures of self-esteem [15, 28, 36]. Future research is necessary to determine if in fact some measures are inappropriate to measure change following an assistance dog, which may be addressed using interviewing and focus group techniques among assistance dog handlers. Part of the justification for why nonhuman animals are studied in psychology has to do with the fact of evolution. For example, organizations that place assistance dogs may have housing, familial, physical, or even financial requirements for potential recipients that should be subsequently reported in the manuscript to fully define the population. Animal psychologists have been undergoing an identity crisis, with increasingly common criticisms of the traditional field revolving around the assumption that laboratory preparations alone will reveal laws of learning having generality. However, inclusion and exclusion criteria were less commonly described (17/27; 63%). Future research will benefit from stronger methodological rigor and reporting to account for heterogeneity in both humans and assistance dogs as well as continued high-quality replication. Therefore, future studies are warranted that specifically assess health and wellbeing using validated parent-proxy or self-report measures to fully understand the potential effects that assistance dogs can have on children and adolescents with disabilities. Lack of control: Another downside is that the experimenter cannot control for outside variables. Pet-Owning Kids Are Generally Better Off The disadvantage of animal research is that it lessens the value of life. Our search procedure identified 24 articles containing 27 studies assessing psychosocial outcomes from a wide variety of human and assistance dog populations. Of 43 total social outcome comparisons, 7 (16%) were positive (improved or better social health in comparison to pre- or control conditions), 36 (84%) were null (no difference) and zero (0%) were negative (decreased or worse social health in comparison to pre- or control conditions). Purdue University Libraries, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, United States of America. PDF American Psychological Association (APA) Although outcomes from assistance dog placement for children and adolescents have been quantified with qualitative [e.g., 6971] and observational [e.g., 72] study designs, effects on standardized measures of psychosocial wellbeing including social functioning have not been explored. In results sections, 15/21 studies with a control or comparison condition (71%) demonstrated that participants in each condition were comparable on demographic variables. The use of animal models in behavioural neuroscience research Therefore, the current literature is limited to correlational, rather than causal conclusions regarding the benefits of assistance dogs on the psychosocial health of their owners. of Agriculture, and, at the local level by Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees (IACUCs). Using a new technique, it is now possible to temporarily inactivate the amygdala in a monkey and see how other brain areas (including those that are not directly connected to the amygdala) change their activity (Grayson et al., 2016). In other contexts, dogs can be specially trained to provide specific benefits to individuals with impairments, disabilities, or chronic conditions as trained assistance animals. The below discussion considers various potential explanations for the inconsistencies in findings across studies. alerting or responding to medical crises such hypoglycemia or seizures), and individuals with mental health disorders (e.g. However, on different measures of social functioning Rodriguez et al. Discuss the Strengths and Weaknesses of the Use of Animals for Further, the number of years spent with the assistance dog at the time of surveying was unknown for half of the cross-sectional studies [29, 37, 40, 4245]. On the other hand, Spence [34] found no improvement to a composite score of psychological health 12-months after receiving a mobility service dog. Future longitudinal research in this population is necessary to understand the complex psychosocial and physical roles that guide dogs play in the lives of their handlers. Only 6/27 (22%) reported any estimates of effect size in their results. Further, as publication bias and the file-drawer effect is an often referenced weakness of the HAI literature [22], two dissertation and thesis databases and abstracts of two conferences were searched for unpublished studies. Why is animal psychology important? [35] found no improvement 3-months after receiving a mobility, hearing, or medical service dog, Donovan [28] found no improvement 4-months after receiving a mobility service dog, and Shintani et al. The rationale for excluding studies on emotional service dogs and psychiatric service dogs is that the primary benefits of these dogs are psychological in nature, rather than physical or medical, which complicated comparisons of their psychosocial effects. Nine studies assessed self-esteem as a primary outcome, with four studies [14, 32, 36, 46] finding a significant effect of having a guide, hearing, mobility, or medical service dog on self-esteem as measured by the Rosenberg Self Esteem Scale [RSES; 53]. Regarding emotional health, 7/15 (46%) outcomes were significant across group or condition. A main weakness of animal studies is that animals have a different physiology to humans. The principle disadvantage with animal experiments is the problem of generalisability. The Sad Truth About Pet Ownership and Depression - Psychology Today When reporting statistical results, 78% of studies (21/27) provided estimates of variability for outcomes, including confidence intervals, standard deviations, or standard error of the mean. Limitations This research aimed to conduct a systematic assessment of the current state of knowledge regarding the potential benefits of assistance dogs on standardized outcomes of the health and wellbeing of individuals with disabilities. mobility or guide), thus restricting human participants to a single category of impairments. If it does, then it can be tested on humans with a lower risk of a negative outcome. Promising areas include psychological wellbeing, emotional wellbeing, and social participation in which several positive outcomes were identified. Summary of methodological rating scores by each of the N = 27 individual studies. Advantages and Disadvantages of Animal Testing | Sciencing Finally, one of the most notable examples of poor methodological reporting across studies was the omission of information regarding assistance dogs sources (e.g. 14 Pros and Cons of Animal Research - Vittana.org Three studies using SF-36 failed to find significant effects on the social domain; Lundqvist et al. Longitudinal studies have found that individuals report improvements to their emotional wellbeing, social functioning, and quality of life just 3 to 6 months after receiving an assistance dog [1315]. [16] found no difference in sleep disturbance between individuals with mobility or medical service dog and a control group. Assistance dog placements and roles have grown rapidly in recent decades, especially in the United States, Canada, and Europe [2]. Seven studies (26%) had sample sizes less than or equal to N = 20, all of which were longitudinal. In addition, reporting detailed information on assistance dogs allows for the consideration of the dogs as individual agents in the therapeutic process rather than as uniform tools [1, 74]. The electronic searches were performed on July 23, 2018, and updated on January 23, 2019. Of 147 comparisons, 44 (30%) were positive (improved or better functioning in comparison to pre- or control conditions), 100 (68%) were null (no observed difference), and 3 (2%) were negative (decreased or worse functioning in comparison to pre- or control conditions). But, was then later tested on a human and the human died. Articles were published from 19942018 with publication dates in the 1990s (5), 2000s (9), and 2010s (10) indicating an increasing publication rate on this topic over time. Most longitudinal studies (8/12) assessed participants at two time points: at baseline prior to receiving an assistance dog, and an average of 5.8 +/- 3.3 months after participants received an assistance dog (range of 312 months follow-up). In the case of disagreements, inclusion or exclusion was resolved by discussion and consultation with a third independent reviewer (author MO). He is currently the chair of APAs Committee on Animal Research and Ethics. Evaluation of animal models of neurobehavioral disorders Summary of vitality outcomes across studies ordered by sub-category, then by standardized measure.