Use of Animal-Assisted Interventions and Children's Field: A Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

Aim: It is aimed to present a world panorama of published articles on animal-assisted interventions in children and to highlight the characteristics of studies on animal-assisted interventions in the field of children.
 Method: In this study, a bibliometric analysis of the studies was conducted to analyze the trends of publications in the fields of "Animal Assisted Interventions" and "Child". The articles analyzed in this study were obtained from the Web of Science Core Collection (WoS) database with search keywords. Inclusion criteria include English-language articles in journals published in the Science Citation Index Expanded or Social Science Citation Index.
 Results: It was determined that the trends of research on "Animal Assisted Interventions" and "Child" increased between 2020-2023. It has been determined that 80% of the research on "Animal Assisted Interventions" consists of research articles. It was determined that the most cited article (n=213) in studies related to "Animal Assisted Interventions" and "Child" was "Animal Assisted Intervention for Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Systematic Literature Review" and was published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. Among the countries that gave the most support to the published articles, the United States came first (n=460), the second was Australia (n=112) and Italy (n=109). Apart from the keywords used in this search, the first five keywords used include "child (n = 196), therapy (n = 82), adolescents (n = 70), animal-assisted therapy (n = 61), dogs (n=54)”.
 Conclusions: The results of this bibliometric analysis showed that there has been a growing interest in the topic of AAI in the children's field over the last 10 years. It is thought that the results of this study will contribute to the evaluation of the status of studies on animal assisted intervention and to guide future research in this field.