Evaluation of Undergraduate Students' Responsiveness to a 4-Week University-Based Animal-Assisted Stress Prevention Program.

An increase in the prevalence of stress among college students is compromising their mental health and academic success. One approach to stress prevention that has seen a surge in implementation is the use of university-based Animal Visitation Programs (AVPs). Despite their popularity and promising causal findings, program evaluations on students' responsiveness (e.

Exploring the Handler-Dog Connection within a University-Based Animal-Assisted Activity.

There has been an increase in research concerning the quality of dyadic interactions between humans and dogs in university-based animal assisted activities (AAAs). While interactions between students and dogs are commonly an area of focus, studies examining interactions between handlers and their dogs are needed. We coded 10-min long video-recorded observations ( = 151) using a mixed methods approach to capture the duration and frequency of dog-directed handler behavior (i.