| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立體育學院 === 休閒產業經營學系碩士班 === 94 === Aging society becomes a globing phenomenon. The decreasing of birth rate and extension of life spam make the issues of aging society more severed. Increasing population of chronic sick elders and lacking of companies and siblings became issues. According to previous studies in U.S.A. and Europe, playing with pets and animals provides the source of comforting and sense of companionship. In addition, the benefit of animal assistant leisure activity (AALA) influences physical and psychological health. However, there is lack of AALA related studies in Taiwan, especially qualitative and experimental studies.
The purpose of this study is to determine the physical effects by applying AALA and provide another choice of leisure activity to rest home elders. The researcher conducted a longitudinal AALA experiment to the experimental group one hour a time and 6 times a week for 6 weeks. Questionnaires, interview, and on-site observation were applied for both experiment group (participated in AALA) and control group (did not participated in AALA) in comparison.
Based on the results, from the physical health aspect, the participation AALA had slightly positive influence to the two groups’ elders. From the psychological health aspect, the experiment group’s had improved much better than the control group. From the social health aspect, the behavior of the experiment group was better than the control group. The researcher concluded that the elders perceived physical, psychological and societal health benefits by applying AALA.
According to the findings, the researcher suggest that rest home may be set in the community area for the convenience of visiting and may have animals or pets in the rest home for the companionship. For the government policy shall be proposed to encourage the AALA promotion, ministrantl anima training and license certification. For the future research, the researcher suggested to apply AALA by different objects and the research techniques.
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