Assignment
Find two new articles to response to each post and elaborate and add more information.
Post#1:
The article I am choosing to evaluate, Pet Ownership and Older Women: the relationships among loneliness, pet attachment support, human social support, and depressed mood, is related to the psychological and physical benefits of pets on older adults (Krause-Parello, 2012). I chose this article because I love animals, as do my parents who are older and who currently don’t have a pet, but are looking forward to adopting one when they retire in the next few years! Petting people’s dogs and cats brings me a lot of joy and I am interested to know if that level of happiness that a pet can bring is enough to alter feelings of loneliness and depression in older populations.
The purpose of the study was to understand the relationship between mental health and older pet-owning adults, as well as the “extent to which pet attachment” can enhance the mental well-being of older women (Krause-Parello, 2012). This article is relevant to epidemiology because it is a cross-sectional study that focuses on one of the largest growing populations around the globe: the elderly (Gu et al., 2021). The results of this study have physical and psychological implications that are important when caring for older individuals and gives insight on coping resources for the older population (Krause-Parello, 2012).
References:
Gu, D., Andreev, K., & Dupre, M. E. (2021). Major Trends in Population Growth Around the World. China CDC weekly, 3(28), 604–613. https://doi.org/10.46234/ccdcw2021.160Links to an external site.
Krause-Parello C. A. (2012). Pet ownership and older women: the relationships among loneliness, pet attachment support, human social support, and depressed mood. Geriatric nursing (New York, N.Y.), 33(3), 194–203. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gerinurse.2011.12.005Links to an external site.
Post #2:
The article I have chosen is titled “Context-Specific Associations of Physical Activity and Sedentary Behavior With Cognition in Children”. I selected this article because as a mother with young kids, I am interested in learning more about the kind of activities that are associated with higher cognition in children. I’m also interested in how they can measure cognition for study purpose. This article is relevant to epidemiology, because it explored the determinants of a health condition – cognition – in a group of population – children. Compared with previous studies conducted in this topic, this study particularly focused on the context of the activities and also objective measurements of activities, in addition to reported activities. Results of the study can give insights to caregivers and health professionals on the ways to increase cognitive performance in children.
Reference:
Aggio, D., Smith, L., Fisher, A., & Hamer, M. (2016). Context-Specific Associations of Physical Activity and Sedentary Behavior With Cognition in Children. American journal of epidemiology, 183(12), 1075–1082. https://doi.org/10.1093/aje/kww031
