Journal Critique - Essay Example

The Introduction part which followed the abstract provided information on pet therapy and also mentioned how dogs affect blood pressure and heart rate. Also, it mentioned how pets affect cardiovascular processes such as the two mentioned above in different age groups. The methodology section provided the necessary information on how the study was conducted. It described the school where the children participated in and other supporting data such as the average duration of a student’s stay and the primary goal of the school which is to facilitate the transition of students back to a classroom in a regular school.

The researchers explained the study the principal who then relayed the information to the parents. Parental permission is required before the students to be able to join the study. In the end, only 22 children out of the 30 obtained parental permission which is two thirds of the available population. To summarize, the 17 children in the study were the basis of the data analysis, out of the 17, 16 have Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) as well as other co-diagnoses and the last one was the only one with Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD).

The methodology part also included the measure used in the study aside from the participants. The measures used in the study included ‘teacher ratings of behavior’. For this part, the teachers were asked to rate each child who participated on a 5-point scale an hour every time a child returns from each of the two sessions. Another measure used are the test sessions with children. The methodology part also defined the dog used in the study and the blood pressure and Heart Rate Recordings. The results section showed how a 2 (dog presence: dog day versus no dog day) by 3 (three consecutive test sessions) repeated measures design was used to analyze each of three dependent variables: SBP, DBP, and HR.

The paper aimed to analyze the effect of a