Measuring Adolescent Development in Animal-Assisted Interventions: The Development of the Relative Efficacy Map Approach

• In Event: Human-animal interaction as a context for supporting youth development

Abstract

Animal-self-regulation skills of opportunities for youth to engage in reciprocal human-animal relationships that can support social-emotional competencies. However, AAIs are often incorporated into complex environments that include different types of interventions and varied protocols for their implementation, which complicates efforts to examine the link between AAIs and youth development. Traditional approaches such as randomized controlled designs are often impractical in these settings, especially because applying such designs sacrifices ecological validity in ways that may miss the nuances inherent to a complex environment. Furthermore, given the fragility of self-report data, there is a need for diversified measurement approaches in AAI settings, such as the use of direct observation.
Therefore, the objective of this study was to provide initial pilot data supporting the development of a methodological approach that will be referred to as a Relative Efficacy Map (REM). This REM approach will use high intensity video observations of individual children’s classroom behaviors to identify the linkages between AAIs and adolescent developmental health in a manner that maintains the contextual richness of the environment in which they are delivered. The depth, structure, and richness of data collected via intensive measurement designs, such as the second-to-second behavioral codes of video-based observations, afford analytic opportunities that are impossible from the perspective of sparse sampling approaches (e.g., simple pre-post assessments).
Data were collected at Green Chimneys, a residential treatment and special education school that represents a complex environment. Green Chimneys integrates a diverse range of AAIs to support developmental health and academic competencies in youth with persistent psychosocial, educational, and developmental challenges. We assessed emotion regulation by coding a total of 163 five-minute video clips from a sample of nine students (mean age 12.48 years) using a modified version of the Facial Expression Coding System (FACES; Kring & Sloan, 2007). Videos were obtained directly before (pretest) and after (posttest) participating children attended a non-AAI program (active control; health class [Health]), a passive control condition (English Language Arts [ELA]), or one of two AAIs (a wildlife education program [Wildlife], or interacting with farm animals [Farm]).
As Table 1 shows, expressions of affect declined (became more neutral) at pretest for three interventions (ELA and the two AAIs) but increased (became less neutral) prior to participants leaving the classroom to attend a health class. At posttest, affect tended to increase in the ELA condition, decrease in the Health condition, and was not significantly different from zero in the two AAI conditions. Figure 1 plots affect trajectories for the first pre-post video pair for the Farm condition, which illustrates negative and flat FACES trajectories. FACES scores tend to be neutral with brief burst of positive affect in this figure, a trend seen in the larger data as well. At the level of the whole sample, our findings indicate that students’ emotion regulation improves across the pretest period and therefore indicate that student behaviors may change in anticipation of participating in animal-assisted interventions. These results support need for fully developing the REM approach to measure this type of complex intervention.

Authors

• Erin Flynn, University of Denver
  Presenting Author

• G. John Geldhof, Oregon State University - Corvallis
  Non-Presenting Author

• Megan Kiely Mueller, Tufts University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Svea Olsen, Oregon State University - Corvallis
  Non-Presenting Author

• Dakota Witzel, Oregon State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kevin N Morris, University of zDenver
  Non-Presenting Author