You are on page 1of 6

Do Animals Have a Benefit on Mental Health?

Caitlin Morrow, Haylee Thiel, and Damien Celaya


Group 5
EDT 180C: TechLtrcy Prblm Slvng DigTech
EDT 180C
Gary Lewallen
4/17/2018
Group 5, Do Animals Have a Benefit on Mental health

The research topic that our group has decided to work with is whether or not animals are

perceived by the public to have added benefits to the mental health of humans. The question we

came up with is “Do animals have a benefit on mental health?” In order to collect this

information, we created a survey on Google docs in order to gain a general understanding of

what the public thinks about this particular question. The survey had received 131 responses

from current Arizona State University students.

This first chart represents the many different students within their class years to give us a

better idea of who will be taking part in this survey. As you can see, freshman make up a

majority of the population and the higher students tend to be in their school year shows that there

are significantly fewer of them in comparison. With the different school years and ages that

2
Group 5, Do Animals Have a Benefit on Mental health

accompany them, it is safe to say that if we could have done anything different, it would be to

evenly give the survey to every school year to the best of our ability.

This chart regarding the many age groups that have participated in the survey

heavily reflects the chart regarding different school years. As we have stated earlier, we believe

the general outcome of the survey results would have been a better representation of the public

opinion if it had been evenly distributed between the many different age groups and school years.

It is safe to say that a majority of these opinions and thoughts are coming from younger minds

which does have an effect on their levels of empathy, sympathy, and maturity.

3
Group 5, Do Animals Have a Benefit on Mental health

This is a straight forward question from the survey that very clearly has a favored response.

Without truly elaborating on how well-trained the animals are prior to their certification along

with the extent of the training they’d receive if it was required, the general idea that the majority

chose is the required extensive training. This does make a lot of sense as an extra level of

training would very easily impact the animal’s level of assistance. We do not believe that age or

school year would have a strong impact on this question as the general understanding of animals

is quite common.

4
Group 5, Do Animals Have a Benefit on Mental health

This chart represents the participant’s interpretation of the effectiveness of service animals with
whatever level of knowledge they currently have on the matter. It was expected that the MAYBE
would have the larger majority, but as it turns out, a majority of the students have faith in the
positive impact that service animals have with their owners. Very few were definitively
convinced that the service animals were not a beneficial treatment. We believe this question was
perfectly placed in the survey because it shows a genuine response to a partially understood
concept which reflects our views as a society.

The results displayed in this chart are quite surprising. It wasn’t expected that it was so common
for people to have either owned a service animal or knew others that did. The initial treatment

5
Group 5, Do Animals Have a Benefit on Mental health

regarding service animals had only been approached by few people, and it is interesting to see
that as time goes on, the numbers have grown significantly. This is most definitely a reflection of
how effective they to the patients who have them.

This chart actually represents what we as a group expected. Animals for the most part are loved
and are commonly seen as members of a family. The general love of animals is usually
accompanied by a general understanding of what they can do, and how they contribute to our
lives. There are also those who are either apathetic to the concept of animals being helpful or
have endured bad experiences to convince them otherwise. This question perfectly represents the
general thought of how students see animals and what they bring to our lives.

Analysis:
After collecting all of the data and analyzing it as a whole, it’s safe to say that the
majority of students support the concept of service animals and have some sort of familiarity to
the idea. How much of the answers would change if we had given out informational resources to
the survey takers after their initial responses without assisted informative items. If we could
change one thing about our survey it would be to evenly distribute the survey to equal parts of
men, women, and all of the differing school years.

You might also like