Martin B. Marx

Pet Ownership and Attachment as Supportive Factors in the Health of the Elderly

AbstractIn order to examine pet ownership and pet attachment as factors supporting the health of the elderly, a national probability sample of Americans 65 years of age and older was drawn. Participants answered telephone survey questions regarding pet ownership, life stress, social support, depression, and recent illness. In multiple regression analyses, pet ownership failed to predict depression and illness behavior, while pet attachment significantly predicted depression but not illness experience. In a group with particularly great distress (the bereaved), pet ownership and strong attachment were significantly associated with less depression only when the number of available confidants was minimal.

The influence of recent life experience on the health of college freshmen

from the records of a University’s Health Service [l-4]. When based on surveys, studies of the prevalence of disease among students may reveal interesting associations between reported illness and demographic or social characteristics of interest; and prevalence data obtained from health records may provide useful information for therapeutic or administrative purposes. However, the demographic or social characteristic of interest may be unrelated to the etiology of the illness and the limitations imposed by the selective recall of illnesses, selective attrition from a target population and selective entry into a health care system further restrict the value of all prevalence data for suggesting useful preventive measures. Preventive programs are logically directed toward populations which are at high risk of ill-health. Such populations are identifiable by documenting the differential occurrence of new events of illness during some time period, i.e., incidence. Among college students, effective intervention as a preventive measure may be directed most effectively toward a population showing an increased incidence of ill-health during their first year of college. Preventive programs would be aimed at altering factors found causally associated with an increased incidence. Since the mechanisms for continuous monitoring of students’ physical and mental health as well as their social and intellectual behavior already exist in most academic environments, evaluation of preventive programs is not difficult to conceptualize. Thus college campuses appear to be natural laboratories in which to develop incidence rates and identify potentially causal factors. Based on such data preventive programs may be developed and evaluated. BACKGROUND

Factors influencing self-assessment of health.

Abstract Perception of ones own health status has proven a useful proxy measure for clinically-measured health status. Perceived health has also shown considerable promise as a predictor of several types of behavioral and physical outcomes after illness. The present study replicates the work of others in finding several correlates of this potentially important variable. Two conceptual models derived from the literature on recent life experience and health are presented as being possibly useful for situating perceived health in a framework of causal relationships.

Pet Ownership and Attachment in Relation to the Health of U.S. Adults, 21 to 64 Years of Age

AbstractPet ownership and attachment to a pet have been reported to have a salutary influence on health in selected populations. General population surveys of the beneficial effects of pet ownership have not been conducted. The purpose of this national survey was to examine the relationship of pet ownership and attachment to self-reported illness behavior and emotional distress in three stages of life: early adulthood (21 to 34 years of age), early middle age (35 to 44 years of age), and late middle age (45 to 64 years of age). Data were obtained from a probability sample of U.S. households with at least one resident aged 21 to 64 years of age selected by random-digit dialing using a two-stage cluster design stratified by U.S. census regions. The response rate was 65.7%, yielding a sample of 1,300 household respondents. Emotional distress was measured using the 20-item Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression (CES-D) scale. Illness behavior was assessed by the number of physician visits, prescription m...

Quality of Attachment to Companion Animals among U.S. Adults 21 to 64 Years of Age

AbstractPrevious reports of scales and indices used in studying attachment to companion animals have not included representative samples of the United States population or have failed to show good psychometric properties. This report includes psychometric analyses of a companionanimal attachment scale used among a national probability sample of United States adults aged 21 to 64 years. Internal structures of the scale were shown to be good with all eight items loading strongly on one factor. Cronbachs alpha was 0.75 with all eight items included. As expected, those individuals who had sole responsibility for the care of the companion animal had stronger attachment scores, as did individuals who had never been married. Type of pet was not significantly associated with attachment scores, which indicates that this scale may be useful for all companion animals, not solely for dogs and cats. However, further work including a larger sample of bird and fish owners needs to be done before the value of this attac...

Attachment to Companion Animals among Older Pet Owners

AbstractPsychometric properties are examined in a pet-attachment index used in a national probability survey of households including at least one resident aged 65 or older. Cronbachs alpha for the overall scale was 0.58, indicating low but acceptable internal reliability. Internal structure was evaluated using principal-components analysis. Two factors were identified. Responses to individual questions in the index were associated with a number of respondent characteristics, including type of pet owned and gender and identity of primary caregiver. The results support the need for further work to develop a reliable and valid pet-attachment index for use in studies of the potential beneficial effects of owning companion animals.

Demographics of pet ownership among U.S. adults 21 to 64 years of age

AbstractA telephone survey of a national probability sample of U.S. adults 21 to 64 years old contrasts the demographic characteristics of 816 pet owners and 448 non-owners residing in 1,300 households from 47 states and the District of Columbia.Significant differences between owners and non-owners were found to relate to age groups, number of people and number of children in the household, race, marital status, income, rural/urban residence, and occupational prestige level. No association was detected between pet ownership and education, resident region of the country, or gender.

Epilepsy in rural Kentucky: prevalence in a population of school age children.

Seizure prevalence among school age children residing in a rural western Kentucky area (Hardin County) was determined utilizing a method designed to minimize false positives and to allow estimation of false negatives. The observed prevalence of epilepsy is 5.7/1,000 and of febrile seizures 17/1,000. Because of the high rate of false negative responses detected by random sample interview, the true rate of febrile seizures is believed to be closer to a projected rate of 31/1,000.

Personality factors in resistance to illness after recent life changes.

Abstract Three personality dimensions, derived by factor analysis from the Omnibus Personality Inventory, are examined as possible intervening variables between recent life experience and subsequent health change in a college population. All three personality measures, social conformity, liberal intellectualism and emotional sensitivity, are found to be independently and significantly predictive of health change; these relationships hold even when recent life experience is introduced as a significant predictor of health change. The addition of personality measures to information about recent life experience sinificantly improves the predicability of deleterious health change. The results are discussed in the context of factors which promote resistance to health breakdown after life changes.

The relationship of recent life change to seriousness of later illness.

Abstract A sample of 313 college freshmen was prospectively studied to determine whether recent life change predicted the seriousness of subsequent illness. Using the Seriousness of Illness Rating Scale as the measure of seriousness, it was found that recent life change correlated at 0.33 with seriousness. This measure of seriousness also correlated with several other measures of severity and seriousness. However, the fact that seriousness was highly correlated (0.80) with the number of new health problems experienced, raises questions about the value of using both as outcome measures in life change research.