Animal visitation programs have been used in a wide variety of clinical settings with predominantly positive outcomes reported anecdotally. However, there is also a growing body of research investigating the effects of these interventions. Developing and conducting rigorous studies of animal interventions can be a complex and challenging process, The purpose of this article is to identify and discuss several issues arising with this type of research and to posit suggestions for avoiding pitfalls.
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Johnson et al. (2002) studied this question.
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