The Impact of Human-Animal Interaction on Adjustment of Children Exposed to Adverse Family Environments

Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond VA

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Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY Clarifying relations between human-animal interaction (HAI) and child adjustment in the context of adverse childhood experiences is critical for understanding how animals in the home impact children's development. HAI may confer both protective effects and pose additional risks to children's development and wellbeing. It is well documented that exposure to animal maltreatment (AM) is prevalent and frequently co-occurs with other forms of adversity. Although prior research links childhood AM exposure with short- and long-term maladjustment, the majority of prior research has relied on an overly simplistic dichotomous index that does not address the complexity of AM exposure and/or fails to account for co-occurring adverse experiences. The lack of a reliable and valid instrument has hindered efforts to delineate how AM exposure and positive aspects of HAI (e.g., attachment to pets) interact and influence children's development in the context of co-occurring adversities. This project has two goals designed to address these limitations and advance HAI research in response to PAR-18-650: 1) to develop the Youth Checklist of Animal-Related Experiences (CARE-Y), a new measure of exposure to AM that is valid and reliable for use with children and adolescents, and 2) to use the CARE-Y to collect pilot data to lay the groundwork for a longitudinal R01 that will more rigorously test risk and protective effects of HAI on relations between childhood adversity and child health and development. We will recruit a purposive sample of children (7-17 years) who have experienced, or are at high risk for experiencing, adverse childhood events, and have or have had at least one pet in their residence over the past 12 months. During Phase 1, we will recruit 25 caregiver-child pairs to participate in interviews that will inform measurement development procedures. During Phase 2, we will collect data from 250 child-caregiver pairs. Our assessment strategy will include multiple informants and well-established measures of children's victimization experiences, HAI (attachment to and positive engagement with pets), and child adjustment (cognitive emotion regulation, social skills, internalizing and externalizing behaviors, and posttraumatic stress). Data from Phase 2 will be used to examine: (a) psychometric properties (Aim 1) and validity of the CARE-Y (Aim 2), and (b) relations between adverse childhood experiences, AM exposure, HAI, and socioemotional adjustment (Aim 3). The proposed project is innovative and important because it will use scientifically rigorous approaches (structural equation modeling and item response theory) to establish an ecologically relevant measure grounded in the experiences of children that adequately captures the complexity and multidimensional nature of this construct in a diverse sample. It is designed to provide critical instrumentation and preliminary knowledge for a longitudinal study to examine the impact of HAI on child development in the context of adverse family settings. At the end of this project, we will have a better understanding of how child-pet interactions may influence child wellbeing.