This is the solution for the Assignment 1 of course PSYC 304 Research Methods in Psychology of Athabasca University. The grade for this Assignment is 89%. Since the course has been dropped in the middle, you can use this directly for the first time. Next times, you will have to modify this little b...
Is Pet Ownership Beneficial to People’s Health
“Is pet Ownership Beneficial to People’s Health? If yes, why?” is the broad research topic that is
chosen for this literature search online assignment. In any online search, the keyword is the most key
element as the results solely rely on them. Therefore, the title is divided into 2 parts as “Pet Ownership”
and “Beneficial to People’s Health”. Initially it was decided to ignore the word “people’s” in the second
part of the breakdown as the exact term with an apostrophe is less likely to be used in all the papers and
it could affect the accuracy of the results. Initially, the language was set to English and the Publication
Year was kept between 2011-2021 in the advanced search, to fulfill the assignment requirement. The
peer reviewed option was ticked off to get only the scholarly articles back as the result. Initially when
the 2 keywords “Pet ownership” and “Beneficial to Health” was entered in the search field with the
above-mentioned advanced settings, it only returned 7 results. So, the word “ownership” was deleted
and the search was done again. This time it has returned 14 results, but it has included the results about
robopets among them too. So, the word “Robopets” were included in the 3 rd search bar with not option.
The final search option was like “Pet” and “Beneficial to Health” not “robopets”. It has returned with the
most appropriate 12 scholarly articles as the keywords clearly states about the inclusion and the
exclusions.
1. Title: The Positive effects of pet ownership on Alzheimer’s disease.
Authors: Rusanen, Minna. Department of Neurology, Institute of Clinical Medicine,
University of Eastern Finland, Kuopio, Finland, minna.rusanen@kuh.fi
Selander, Tuomas. Science Service Center, Kuopio University Hospital,
Kuopio, Finland
Kärkkäinen, Virve. Neurosurgery of Neuro Center, Kuopio University Hospital,
Kuopio, Finland
Koivisto, Anne. Department of Neurology, Institute of Clinical Medicine,
University of Eastern Finland, Kuopio, Finland
Source: Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, Vol 84(4), 2021. pp. 1669-1675.
Publisher: Netherlands : IOS Press
Language: English
Keywords: Alzheimer’s disease, Pet ownership, Activities of daily living, Disease
progression, Neuropsychiatric symptoms
Abstract: Background: Human-animal interactions are known to have many beneficial
psychosocial and psychophysiological effects on persons with and without
medical health conditions. There are no previous prospective studies with long
follow-up times on the effects of domestic pets on the persons with Alzheimer’s
disease (AD) living at home. Objective: To investigate the effects of pets on
the activities of daily living (ADL), disease progression, and neuropsychiatric
symptoms (NPS) during a five-year follow-up on the persons with AD.
Methods: Altogether 223 home-dwelling persons (mean age 75.2 years) with
very mild (CDR 0.5) or mild (CDR 1) AD at baseline were included for this
study. ADCS-ADL, NPI, MMSE, and CDR-SOB were measured at baseline,
annually for three years and after five years. Results: Totally 40 (17.9%)
participants had a pet. At the baseline, pet owners and non-pet owners had no
significant differences in age, gender, or the ADCS-ADL, NPS, and CDR-SOB
scores, while MMSE was lower in pet owners than non-pet owners (20.2
versus 21.7; p = 0.009). Over the follow-up, pet owners had significantly better
mean ADCS-ADL (57.5 versus 54.0; p = 0.031), NPI (9.3 versus 13.0; p =
0.038), and CDR-SOB scores (5.7 versus 6.6; p = 0.004) compared to non-pet
owners. The differences in the MMSE scores between the groups detected at
baseline attenuated over time. Conclusion: Significant positive effects of the
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