Effect of Dog Presence on Stress Levels in Students under Psychological Strain: A Pilot Study

Kristýna Machová, Radka Procházková, Mariana Vadroňová, Michaela Součková and Eliška Prouzová
Additional contact information
Kristýna Machová: Department of Ethology and Companion Animal Science, Faculty of Agrobiology, Food and Natural Resources Czech University of Life Sciences, 16500 Prague, Czech Republic
Radka Procházková: Department of Statistics, Faculty of Economics and Management, Czech University of Life Sciences, 16500 Prague, Czech Republic
Mariana Vadroňová: Department of Ethology and Companion Animal Science, Faculty of Agrobiology, Food and Natural Resources Czech University of Life Sciences, 16500 Prague, Czech Republic
Michaela Součková: Department of Ethology and Companion Animal Science, Faculty of Agrobiology, Food and Natural Resources Czech University of Life Sciences, 16500 Prague, Czech Republic
Eliška Prouzová: Department of Ethology and Companion Animal Science, Faculty of Agrobiology, Food and Natural Resources Czech University of Life Sciences, 16500 Prague, Czech Republic

IJERPH, 2020, vol. 17, issue 7, 1-12

Abstract: As university students face many stressful situations, especially during the examination period, this study focused on the use of animal-assisted activities (AAAs) with a dog as a means of relieving students’ stress before a final exam. The aim was to determine whether a 10-min interaction with a dog affected subjectively evaluated stress and mood, objective blood pressure, and heart rate. Ninety-three female students (mean age = 22.5 years; standard deviation = 3.8 years) were divided into three groups according to their preference. The first group underwent AAAs ( n = 26), the second group chose a relaxation technique ( n = 28), and the last one was a control group ( n = 39). Physiological values were measured using a pressure gauge and the subjective feelings of stress and mood were evaluated by the Likert scale 1–5. The AAA group showed significant improvement after 10 min of interaction in both mood and stress, with no change in heart rate and blood pressure. The remaining groups showed a significant decrease in blood pressure, but not in heart rate, with different evaluations of mood and stress. AAAs with a dog appear to be effective in improving students’ mood and stress without affecting their physiological parameters.

Keywords: animal assisted activity; students’ health; stress; dog (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/7/2286/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/7/2286/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:17:y:2020:i:7:p:2286-:d:338307

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().