Megan Kiely Mueller

Pet obesity management: beyond nutrition.

Excess weight has been associated with many clinical and subclinical conditions that put a pets health at risk. Successful weight management programs extend beyond standard nutritional management and incorporate an understanding of human-animal interaction. Understanding the processes and dynamics of human-animal relationships can be a useful tool for practitioners in developing successful treatment plans for their clients. Obesity is a nutritional disorder requiring lifelong management; however, when veterinarians go beyond standard treatment to include an understanding of human-animal interaction, it is also one of the few conditions in veterinary medicine that is completely preventable and curable.

Is Human-Animal Interaction (HAI) Linked to Positive Youth Development? Initial Answers

Human-animal relationships are ubiquitous and diverse across the life span and may be especially salient among children and adolescents. However, there is little information regarding whether human-animal interaction (HAI) is actually linked to young peoples positive development in normative, nontherapeutic settings. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to explore if and how HAI may be linked to positive youth development (PYD) using data from the 4-H Study of PYD. Results suggested that emotions and cognitions about animals were related to indices of positive development. The implications of these findings, and suggestions for new areas of inquiry regarding the role of HAI as an important developmental context, are discussed.

Youth activity involvement and positive youth development.

Participation in high quality out-of-school-time activities constitutes a significant portion of the time that many youth spend away from their families or school settings, and current theory and research suggests that activity participation can be an influential contextual asset for promoting adaptive outcomes for youth. Therefore, the purpose of this chapter is to highlight how the relational developmental-systems-based positive youth development perspective is a useful framework for examining how and why high quality activity participation may be associated with positive developmental outcomes. As an example of research within this framework, we present findings from the 4-H Study of Positive Youth Development in order to illustrate how activity participation is an important facet of aligning individual youth strengths with resources within the environment. Finally, we discuss how to synthesize the research that exists on activity participation, and what the current research suggests for future empirical and applied steps in the field.

Human-Animal Interaction as a Context for Positive Youth Development: A Relational Developmental Systems Approach to Constructing Human-Animal Interaction Theory and Research

Human-animal relationships are both ubiquitous and diverse across the life span, and may be especially salient among children and adolescents. Although research into youth involvement in human-animal interaction (HAI) is growing, existing data have not adequately explored the developmental processes associated with HAI. The purpose of this article is to discuss why relational developmental systems models, which explore bidirectional influences between individuals and their contexts, constitute a useful paradigm for addressing the challenges and complexities in research pertaining to human-animal relations, particularly in the study of positive youth development. Recommendations are presented for building the field of youth HAI research through expanding the exploration of animal relationships in ways that may serve to promote trajectories of positive development across childhood and adolescence.

Comparing Alternate Approaches to Calculating Reliability for Dichotomous Data: The Sample Case of Adolescent Selection, Optimization, and Compensation

Estimating reliability for scales or factors is an essential data analysis step in much of the research in developmental science. In this article, we demonstrate the importance of using the appropriate statistical method and underlying correlation matrix to estimate reliability for dichotomous data that represent a normally-distributed latent factor. We used an example case of three waves of adolescent data collected from responses to the Selection, Optimization, and Compensation questionnaire (SOC; Freund & Baltes, 2002) of intentional self-regulation to illustrate how calculating composite reliability (or ω) using tetrachoric correlations provides a more accurate estimate of reliability when compared to both raw covariance-based ω, as well as raw covariance-based and tetrachoric correlation-based Cronbachs α approaches. In addition, we describe methods for calculating each of these approaches to reliability estimation, and we offer suggestions for future researchers for estimating reliability for such dichotomous data.

The Five Cs Model of Positive Youth Development

The growing consensus among developmental scientists argues that optimizing young people’s development requires much more than simply ensuring that they avoid negative outcomes (e.g., drug use, delinquency). We must also foster strengths that help youth thrive in their diverse ecologies. In this chapter we draw on data and research from the 4-H Study of Positive Youth Development to discuss the benefits of promoting such strength-based perspectives in youth development programs. Our discussion focuses primarily on the Five Cs of positive youth development and on how our understanding of this model can inform social policies and enhance the experience of both practitioners and the youth they serve.

The Role of Veterinary Education in Safety Policies for Animal-Assisted Therapy and Activities in Hospitals and Nursing Homes.

Animal-assisted activities (AAA) and animal-assisted therapy (AAT) programs are increasing in popularity, but current programs vary in their safety and health policies. Veterinarians can have an important role in ensuring the safety of both the animals and humans involved, but it is unclear how best to educate veterinary students to serve effectively in this role. Therefore, the goal of this study was to assess the knowledge gaps and perceptions of first-year veterinary students on health and safety aspects of AAA/AAT programs by administering a survey. This information could then guide future educational training in veterinary schools to address the knowledge gaps in this area. Formal education during the veterinary curriculum had not yet been provided to these students on AAA/AAT before the survey. Of 98 first-year veterinary students, 91 completed the survey. When asked about policies on visiting animals, 58% of students responded that nursing homes are required to have a policy and 67% responded that hospitals are required to have one. Three quarters of students reported that veterinarians, animal handlers, and facilities should share the responsibility for ensuring safe human-animal interaction in AAA/AAT programs. Most (82%) of the students responded that all or most national and local therapy animal groups prohibit animals that consume raw meat diets from participating in AAA/AAT programs. The results of this survey will help veterinary schools better identify knowledge gaps that can be addressed in veterinary curricula so future veterinarians will be equipped to provide appropriate public health information regarding AAA/AAT programs.

Building Hope for Positive Youth Development: Research, Practice, and Policy

Within the field of positive youth development (PYD), a key goal is to identify strengths of youth that will help explain why some adolescents are able to develop into successful young adults by working toward productive goals and selecting positive behaviors, whereas others follow developmental paths marked by problematic behaviors. In this chapter, we describe the importance of hope in positive development. We define hope as having three key ingredients: intentional self-regulation, positive future expectations, and connectedness. We provide evidence from the 4-H Study of PYD to show how these three ingredients work together to promote the Five Cs of PYD and youth contribution. We make recommendations for practitioners to incorporate or enhance each of these hope ingredients in their youth development programs as well as how to recognize hopelessness among youth and how to intervene. We conclude the chapter with priorities for youth policy, such as allocating funding for programs and program evaluations that take a comprehensive and integrative approach to youth development programming. We believe that hope should be a cornerstone of youth programming and that practitioners, researchers, and policy-makers can be intentional in promoting hope to ensure all young people have opportunities to thrive.

Human–Animal Interaction as a Context for Thriving and Coping in Military-Connected Youth: The Role of Pets During Deployment

There are close to two million children who have parents serving in the United States military. Youth in military families face unique challenges, such as stress about family deployment. Nevertheless, many military-connected youth also exhibit strength and resilience in the face of these challenges. Therefore, it is critical to identify useful resources that are available for youth in military-connected families that may promote such resilience, and how these resources can be optimized to help youth thrive in the context of parental deployment. The purpose of this study was to assess the role of positive relationships with companion animals as a resource for resilience and thriving in military families. Results suggested that attachment to an animal was associated with positive youth development for military-connected youth and with adaptive coping strategies for youth with a deployed family member. Implications of these findings for the potential role of pets as an effective contextual resource for military families are discussed.

Emergence, Self-Organization and Developmental Science

Our understanding is that psychology is a biopsychosocial science as well as a developmental science. Behavioral origins stem from ontogenetic processes, behavioral as well as biological. Biological factors are simply participating factors in behavioral origins and not causal factors. Psychology is not a biological science; it is a unique psychological science, a natural science consistent and compatible with the principles of the other sciences. Accordingly, we show in this chapter how principles and ideas from other sciences play important roles in psychology. While we focus on the concepts from physics of self-organization and emergence, we also address the cosmological and evolutionary biology idea of increased complexity over time, the organizing principle of integrative levels, and the epigenetic processes that are in part responsible for transgenerational trait transmission. Our discussion stresses the developmental science concepts of embodiment and contextualism and how they structure thinking about psychological processes. We conclude with a description of how these ideas support current postpositivist conceptions of relational processes and models in contemporary developmental science.