Estimating the Causal Effect of Interacting with Pet Dogs and Cats

描述（由申请人提供）：几种理论表明，拥有家庭宠物可能具有广泛的有益健康影响，如降低肥胖风险，改善社会适应和积极的心血管结果。如果这些健康影响代表了一般人群的影响，那么养宠物可能会对公众健康产生重大影响。不幸的是，这些影响通常是在小规模研究或方便的样本中发现的，而不是大的代表性样本。此外，现有的文献通常没有调查是否观察到的健康和宠物所有权之间的关联应归因于宠物所有权。大多数现有的研究调查宠物所有权与健康和幸福的关联，未能控制与宠物所有权相关的选择效应。目前的提案旨在利用来自加州健康访谈调查（CHIS）的现有数据解决现有科学文献中的这两个局限性。该样本旨在充分代表加州州。该调查测量了广泛的健康结果，包括整体身体健康，心理健康，社会发展，身体活动，肥胖和哮喘;以及广泛的人口，社会经济和家庭环境变量。2003年，CHIS调查了42，000名成年人，询问了他们家中的狗和猫。CHIS还采访了这些抽样家庭中12 500多名18岁以下的儿童。这些数据将使研究小组能够使用一般人群中具有代表性的大型儿童样本来研究与狗和/或猫一起生活与几个重要健康结果之间的关联。拟议的分析将解决两个具体目标：（1）确定以前在小样本或方便样本中发现的影响是否在儿童和青少年的一般人群中复制;（2）将宠物所有权本身的健康影响与宠物所有权相关特征的影响分开。该分析将使用最先进的统计方法，严格估计宠物所有权对健康的影响，同时控制与宠物所有权相关的非常广泛的个人，家庭和区域特征。此外，数据已经具备，因此，对于如此大规模的流行病学调查而言，拟议研究的影响可以相对较快地实现，而且成本较低。 公共卫生相关性：数百万美国家庭养狗或猫，初步研究表明，这些宠物可能会对公共卫生产生重大影响。利用一项大型流行病学研究的现有数据，该项目将记录与狗和猫一起生活对儿童和青少年的总体公共卫生影响。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Several theories suggest that owning household pets may have a wide range of beneficial health effects such as reduced risk of obesity, improved social adjustment, and positive cardiovascular outcomes. If these health effects are representative of the effects in the general population, then pet ownership may have significant public health benefits. Unfortunately, these effects have generally been found in small-scale studies or convenience samples rather than large representative samples. In addition, the existing literature generally does not investigate whether the observed associations between health and pet ownership should be attributed to pet ownership. Most of the existing research examining the association of pet ownership with health and wellbeing has failed to control for selection effects related to pet ownership. The current proposal seeks to address these two limitations in the existing scientific literature using existing data from the California Health Interview Survey (CHIS). The sample is designed to be fully representative of the state of California. The survey measures a wide range of health outcomes including overall physical health, mental health, social development, physical activity, obesity, and asthma; as well as a wide range of demographic, socioeconomic and family environment variables. In 2003, CHIS surveyed 42,000 adults and asked about dogs and cats living in their households. CHIS also interviewed more than 12,500 children under age 18 in these sampled households. These data will allow the research team to examine the association between living with dogs and/or cats and several important health outcomes using a large, representative sample of children in the general population. The proposed analyses will address two specific aims: (1) Determine whether the effects found previously in small or convenience samples replicate in a general population of children and adolescents and (2) Separate the health effects of pet ownership itself from the effects of characteristics associated with pet ownership. The analysis will use state of the art statistical methods to make rigorous estimates of the effects of pet ownership on health while controlling for a very broad range of individual, household and regional characteristics associated with pet ownership. Moreover, the data are already available, so that the impact of the proposed research can be achieved relatively quickly and at low- cost for such a large-scale epidemiological investigation. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Millions of American households include a dog or a cat and preliminary research suggests that these pets may have significant public health effects. Using existing data from a large epidemiological study, this project will document the overall public health effects of living with dogs and cats on children and adolescents.