Estimating the Causal Effect of Interacting with Pet Dogs and Cats

描述(由申请者提供)：几种理论表明，养宠物可能会对健康产生广泛的有益影响，如降低肥胖风险、改善社会适应能力和积极的心血管结果。如果这些对健康的影响代表了普通人群的影响，那么养宠物可能会对公众健康产生重大好处。不幸的是，这些影响通常是在小规模的研究或方便的样本中发现的，而不是大的代表性样本。此外，现有文献一般没有调查观察到的健康和宠物饲养之间的联系是否应该归因于宠物饲养。现有的大多数研究宠物饲养与健康和幸福之间的关联的研究都未能控制与宠物饲养有关的选择效应。目前的提案试图利用加州健康访谈调查(CHIS)的现有数据来解决现有科学文献中的这两个限制。该样本被设计为完全代表加利福尼亚州。这项调查衡量了广泛的健康结果，包括总体身体健康、心理健康、社会发展、体育活动、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对42,000名成年人进行了调查，询问了他们家中的猫狗情况。Chis还采访了这些抽样家庭中超过12,500名18岁以下的儿童。这些数据将使研究小组能够使用普通人群中具有代表性的大样本儿童来检查与狗和/或猫生活之间的联系，以及几种重要的健康结果。拟议的分析将针对两个具体目标：(1)确定以前在小样本或方便样本中发现的影响是否在一般儿童和青少年人群中重复出现；(2)将宠物饲养本身对健康的影响与与宠物饲养有关的特征的影响分开。这项分析将使用最先进的统计方法对宠物饲养对健康的影响做出严格的估计，同时控制与宠物饲养有关的非常广泛的个人、家庭和地区特征。此外，数据已经可用，因此，对于如此大规模的流行病学调查，拟议研究的影响可以相对快速和低成本地实现。 与公共健康相关：数以百万计的美国家庭包括一只狗或一只猫，初步研究表明，这些宠物可能会对公共健康产生重大影响。利用一项大型流行病学研究的现有数据，该项目将记录与猫狗生活在一起对儿童和青少年的整体公共健康影响。

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.