Oral Presentation The International Society for Anthrozoology (ISAZ): 27th Annual Conference 2018

Does successful participation in activities with a dog during a nursing home visit affect the subjective assessment of the residents’ experience? (#36)

Karen Thodberg 1 , Poul Videbech 2 , Tia Hansen 3 , Janne W Christensen 1
  1. Department of Animal Science - Behaviour and Stressbiology, Aarhus University, Tjele, Denmark
  2. Mental Health Centre Glostrup, Copenhagen University Hospital, Glostrup, Denmark
  3. Department of Communication and Psychology, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark

Nursing home residents are often encouraged to participate in dog activities during dog-assisted visits. One aim of this inter-disciplinary study was to investigate whether subjective assessments of the residents’ response to visits depended on their participation in planned activities.

A total of 108 nursing home residents were divided randomly into 2 treatment groups that either received 12 visits accompanied by a dog, with a new activity involving the dog during each visit (Dog+Activity), or 12 visits without a dog, but with a new activity during each visit (Activity). Apart from the visitor, an observer was present during all the 10-minute visits, and both assessed the residents’ immediate experience and satisfaction with each visit. We used a scale running from ‘-5’ (worst) to ‘+5’ (best possible visit). A score of ‘0’ described a neutral response, or a visit that was impossible to assess. For each activity, we further scored the residents’ involvement (0-4) from a pre-defined scale, where ‘0’ was no involvement and ‘4’ was reaching maximum criterion and even advancing beyond the planned activity. We analyzed the results in SAS, using a Wilcoxon test (Proc Npar1way) and Spearman correlations (Proc Corr).

Subjective assessments did not differ between visitors and observers (visitor: 4.0 ±1.2; observer: 4.0±1.1), and neither did the assessments of the two visit types.  However, the residents’ involvement differed, and was highest in Activity (z=-2.98, P<0.01; Dog+Activity: 1.4 [0; 3.3], Activity: 2.1 [0; 3.9]. Overall we found overall positive correlations between the subjective assessment and the residents’ involvement for both visit types, (Dog+Activity (both P<0.001), visitor: rs=0.47, observer: rs=0.48; Activity (both P<0.0001), visitor: rs=0.57, observer: rs=0.57). However, analyzing the correlations individually for the 12 different activities in both treatments, we found no significant correlations between involvement and perceived satisfaction for four of the activities in Dog+Activity, whereas all were positive in Activity.

In conclusion, the residents in Dog+Activity were not as involved in the activities as residents in Activity, which may reflect the nature of the activities. However, our results also suggest that for dog visits, residents’ ability and motivation to participate in activities might not influence their outcome.