pets and social development

This topic submitted by Angie Ellis Brandi Johnson (angieellis@aol.com) at 12:08 PM on 4/30/02. Additions were last made on Tuesday, April 30, 2002. Section: Dorsey.

Angie Ellis
Brandi Johnson
WCP222
Joseph Dorsey

Pets and Social Development

Abstract:
Previous studies have shown that pets increase the social development in children. We surveyed a variety of students on MiamiÕs campus to see if self-esteem correlated with the presence of a pet during childhood. We ended up finding that pets do in fact play a role in a childÕs life when developing socially.

Introduction:
Pets have always played a part in peopleÕs lives. Past research has shown that the presence of pets during childhood plays a large role in developing social skills and self-confidence. We hypothesize that having pets at home leads to higher social development in children and increases quality of life. Children often depend on their pets during times of emotional distress. Learning to relate to their pets prepares children to have healthy, social relationships with humans. We hope to support our hypothesis by distributing our survey to a random group of people. We could then conclude that having pets does assist with human social development. We also want to find out if there is a difference in the effect of pets between boys and girls. Both of us have recently lost a pet. This opened our eyes to the importance of a pet, and how much pets can actually impact our lives. This led us to the desire to research this topic and find out how pets have affected others during their life. Most people have never thought about the correlation between humans and their pets, but pets have actually made a big impact on humanÕs growth and development.
Relevance of Research Question:
Other researchers have proven the correlation between social development and companion animals. The article ÒThe Role of Companion Animals in Human DevelopmentÓ states that having a pet can make them feel more secure and have the ability to trust others more easily. This is one way of promoting quality of life. Another way quality of life is enhanced is by companion animals acting as playmates, which increases exploration and independence. The article ÒPet Therapy: When Help Comes with Whiskers and FurÓ explains that having pets can boost a childÕs self-esteem, Òpets donÕt judge.Ó Children confide in their pets with secrets or problems they may be facing. In turn, pets can help kids Òovercome aggression and shyness and they teach responsibility and empathy.Ó A study was performed when childrenÕs parents wre going through divorces and the beneficial effects of having a pet to lean on. As explained in the article ÒThe Positive Influence of Dogs on Children in Divorce CrisesÉÓ pets provide as a mentor to the child during this rough period of time. Ninety-five percent of the children surveyed in this article refer to their pet as an indispensable companion and eighty-five percent tell their pet their problems anger and rage. Most of the children claim that their pet is a retreat free from conflict when their parents quarrel. Children use their pets to conquer their loneliness while trying to overcome their broken home. Personally, both of us have had wonderful experiences with our pets and feel that everyone should participate in the joy of having a pet. From this research and our experiences, we can assume that it would be wise for every family, broken or unbroken, to take advantage of the benefits of having a pet.
Materials and Methods:
We are gathering our data by means of randomly surveying 25 girls and 25 boys, which will give us a sufficient amount of data to analyze and come to statistically sound results. We are including The Rosenberg Self-Esteem test and using the subjectsÕ scores to associate this with one major aspect of their quality of life. We also included seven questions of our own to find out more background information about the subjects. We are using this information to infer the association of owning a pet and their self-esteem scores. This is an example of one of the surveys that will be distributed:
The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale

BELOW IS A LIST OF STATEMENTS DEALING WITH YOUR GENERAL FEELINGS ABOUT YOURSELF. IF YOU STRONGLY AGREE, CIRCLE SA. IF YOU AGREE WITH THE STATEMENT, CIRCLE A. IF YOU DISAGREE, CIRCLE D. IF YOU STRONGLY DISAGREE, CIRCLE SD.
1.STRONGLYAGREE 2AGREE 3.DISAGREE 4.STRONGLYDISAGREE
1. I feel that I'm a person of worth, at least on an equal plane with others. SA A D SD
2. I feel that I have a number of good qualities. SA A D SD
3. All in all, I am inclined to feel that I am a failure.** SA A D SD
4. I am able to do things as well as most other people. SA A D SD
5. I feel I do not have much to be proud of.** SA A D SD
6. I take a positive attitude toward myself. SA A D SD
7. On the whole, I am satisfied with myself. SA A D SD
8. I wish I could have more respect for myself.** SA A D SD
9. I certainly feel useless at times.** SA A D SD
10. At times I think I am no good at all.** SA A D SD

PET SURVEY

1) Have you ever had a pet? Y N If yes how old were you when you had your first pet? If yes what type of pet? Dog Cat other:
2) Have your parents been through a divorce? Y N if no go to question 3. Do you feel you relied on your pet during this time? Y N How much of an impact did the divorce have on you on a scale of 1-10, 10 being the worst?
3) Do you think having a pet in the home strengthens the relationship between family members? Y N
4) Do you have a lot of stress in your life? Y N
5) Do you consider yourself a socially interactive person? Y N
6) Do you consider you pet a member of the family or property of the family? Y N
7) Do you currently own a pet? Y N

In order to have class involvement we plan on distributing the survey to each of our classmates, we will compare the results to our whole experiment and present it to the class with our poster presentation.
We plan to have all 50 surveys completed by March 15th. This will give us plenty of time to analyze and incorporate the information into our poster presentation. We need this extra time because the self-esteem survey requires time-consuming data analysis, by calculating all of the scores and interpreting if the particular subject has high or low self-esteem. We will associate the scores and the presence of a pet or not and perform a t-test and find out if the data is significant.

Results:
After compiling all 50 surveys we carefully sorted the surveys between males and females. Out of the 25 females 17 had pets. Fourteen of the females with pets, eighty-two percent, had high self-esteem. Three of the females or eighteen percent had low self-esteem. Eight of the females did not have pets, four had high self-esteem and four had low self-esteem. Out of the 25 males, 16 had pets. Thirteen or eighty-one percent had high self-esteem, and three or nineteen percent had low self-esteem. Seven of the nine (77%) of the males without a pet had high self-esteem and two (22%) had low self-esteem.
After analyzing males verses females we compared self esteem from people who came from divorced families and people who had parents that didnÕt get a divorce, and if they had pets during this period in their life. 21 people had parents who went through a divorce. 15 of those had pets, 86.7% had high self-esteem, and those that didnÕt have pets only 33.3% had high self-esteem. Among the 29 people who didnÕt have parents who went through a divorce, 18 of them had pets. 94.5% of them had high self-esteem, and 5.5% had low self-esteem. Of the 29 people who didnÕt go through a divorce 11 of them did not have pets. 54.5% had high self-esteem and 45.5% had low self-esteem.

Discussion and Conclusion:
The presence of a pet is more relevant in the social development in females than in males. Our studies show that people that had a broken family were more apt to have high self-esteem with the presence of a pet. The most interesting finding was the difference of the affects on male and female. We didnÕt expect there to be any significant hiatus between the two. Our pie graph shows just how considerable the difference was.
If we were to do this experiment again, we would change the way we measured self-esteem. We considered a person to have high self-esteem if they had a score of 20 or higher on the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale. We found that there werenÕt many people with low self-esteem according to this scale. This experiment would be more accurate if we tested the subjects in a different way, other than surveying, such as observation or interviewing. Since surveying was the most convenient at the time, it would be even more accurate if we did around 100-200 surveys. Surveys tend to be bias when people know what the study is about before taking the survey; therefore our final results are most likely bias. It would also be helpful for this study to have younger subjects that are currently going through the early stages of social development.

Works Cited

Hoff, Tanga, The Positive Influence on Dogs on Children in Divorce Crises from the MotherÕs Perspective and of the Child-Dog Relationship from the ChildÕs Perspective. http://www.deltasociety.org/dsx503.htm. 2/23/02

Keating, John, Pet Thearpy: When Help comes with Whiskers and Fur, >2/25/02.
Melson, G.F., The Role of Companion Animals in Human Development, http://www.deltasociety.org/dsx204.htm 2/23/02

University of Maryland, The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, 2/23/02.

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