John-Tyler Binfet

University of British Columbia - Okanagan | UBC Okanagan · Faculty of Education (1)

On-campus canine-assisted interventions (CAIs) provide opportunities for college students to interact with therapy dog-handler teams and are considered a low-cost and low-barrier way for students to reduce their stress and bolster their well-being. Across studies, we see participant samples comprised predominantly of women participants. The aim of...

Despite the increasing popularity of canine-assisted interventions (CAIs) across a variety of contexts, there is a paucity of literature exploring participants’ perceptions of the mechanisms that contribute to the benefits reported by researchers. This study aimed to expand on the knowledge obtained by our Phase I findings and to better understand...

This bibliometric analysis of Society & Animals ( SOAN ) publications from 2009–2019 generated a portrait of publishing trends including prevalent authors (i.e., Who?), institutions publishing HAI research (i.e., Where?), and salient themes of research showcased (i.e., What?). Pete Porter and Randy Malamud emerged as preeminent authors and collabor...

The University of British Columbia, Okanagan campus, has a long-standing canine facilitated stress reduction program for students titled Building Academic Retention through K9s, or B.A.R.K. Established in 2012, B.A.R.K. provides opportunities for college students and the broader community to interact with therapy dogs as a means of reducing stress...

The field of human-animal interaction (HAI) has experienced prolific growth in the scope, breadth, and rigor of research conducted on animal-assisted interventions (AAIs). As knowledge regarding the preliminary efficacy of AAIs on outcomes of human health and wellbeing continues to accumulate, so has information regarding the feasibility, safety, a...

Teachers may be encouraged to follow a prescribed curriculum when teaching social and emotional learning (SEL), and varied research findings attest to the efficacy of this approach in fostering students’ social and emotional competencies. An alternative approach might see teachers create SEL initiatives and infuse, embed, or integrate SEL into core...

Importance: The mental health crisis among college graduate students requires cost-effective interventions to support the increasing number of students experiencing negative mental health symptoms. Objective: To assess the effects of a canine-assisted intervention (CAI) on student well-being, including quality of life (QOL), stress, anxiety, occupa...

Being a university student is known to be a stressful experience, and researchers across studies have reported elevated stress and compromised mental health for university students when compared with findings from the general population. The unexpected disruption to their studies arising from COVID-19 and its corresponding social isolation added to...

Interest in human–animal interaction (HAI) research is burgeoning. It is suggested that participation in universal programs that incorporate HAI can promote the social and emotional competencies (SECs) of children and youth. However, there is a dearth of empirical evidence (i.e., outcome evaluations) attesting to the effectiveness of such programs....

The aim of this bibliometric analysis was to identify the authors, their institutions and countries, and the content of articles published in the Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science (JAAWS) from 2009–2019. An analysis of 338 articles identified Emily Weiss, Jason B. Coe, and Emily McCobb as frequent publishers and Pauleen C. Bennett and Terry...

Attending university can present a host of challenges for undergraduate students and the mental health of students has increasingly become a concern as students struggle to meet the demands of new academic and social expectations. Despite several studies assessing the effects of being kind on well-being, there remains a dearth of research identifyi...

Despite the increasing popularity of canine-assisted interventions (CAIs) across a variety of contexts, and the demonstrated efficacy they have on stress reduction, there is a paucity of research exploring the implementation of such programs within the context of law enforcement. Policing is known to be an environment in which personnel experience...

Researchers have claimed that canine-assisted interventions (CAIs) contribute significantly to bolstering participants' wellbeing, yet the mechanisms within interactions have received little empirical attention. The aim of this study was to assess the impact of client–canine contact on wellbeing outcomes in a sample of 284 undergraduate college stu...

Covering principles of therapy dog team training, assessment, skills, and ongoing monitoring, Canine-Assisted Interventions provides guidance on the most evidence-based methods for therapy dogs team welfare, training, and assessment. The authors offer a linear approach to understanding all aspects of screening, assessment, and selection of dog/ha...

This study explored children’s perceptions of a canine-assisted social-emotional learning program developed within the framework of a canine therapy program at a mid-sized Canadian university. Data collection made use of interviews, field notes, and observations. Children (N = 8, 5 – 11 years) from an after-school program participated in a six-week...

To date, research on university and college based canine-assisted interventions for post-secondary students have focused on identifying the effects of spending time with therapy dogs on the well-being of participants and, to a lesser extent, exploring the effects of canine-assisted interventions on therapy dogs as a means of safeguarding canine wel...

Educators and parents alike have high expectations that adolescents behave prosocially and, within the context of schools, this is evident in curriculum grounded in social and emotional learning and in kindness-themed school-wide initiatives. Despite this emphasis on kindness, relatively little is empirically known about how adolescents enact kindn...

A current trend in kindness research is to assess the effect of being kind on participants’ well-being. To do this, participants are asked to complete a series of kind acts and the corresponding impact on their well-being is measured. As participation in school-based interventions can vary, the aim of the current study was to assess the extent of a...

Law enforcement officers and staff are known to experience elevated workplace stress, largely due to their increased exposure to traumatic incidents. This results in individuals experiencing trauma themselves and resultant compromised physical and mental health. Law enforcement officers are also known to be reluctant help-seekers and to increase pa...

This mixed-methods study explored how participation in an intensive course on human-animal relationships impacted preservice teachers’ views about human-animal welfare and advocacy and animal-focused curriculum. Participants were 25 undergraduate students (24 female; 1 male) following a teacher education pathway. Participants completed the Animal R...

Therapy animals are an important and growing support for students on university campuses; however, the stress experienced by dogs working in such programs has rarely been assessed. We assessed stress for 754 students, 40 handlers, and 40 dog participants in a canine therapy stress-reduction program hosted on a university campus. There was an overal...

This paper profiles the different ways in which elementary and middle school students report on their acts of kindness and introduces the concept of quiet kindness, a socially and emotionally sophisticated form of kindness that does not draw attention to the initiator, where the recipient remains potentially unaware of the act, and the kind act is...

The purpose of this study was to conduct an investigation of online information and criteria for potential canine-assisted intervention (CAI) teams to better understand current standards set by CAI programs. The field of animal-assisted interventions is burgeoning with CAI programs having moved beyond canine intervention teams visiting clients in a...

This Annotative bibliography was developed to facilitate access to research on happiness and subjective well-being (SWB) in children aged 5 to 12 years old. Articles are thematically organized into seven distinct sections. The first section includes annotations on measures of happiness. This section reports on measurement scales including uni-dimen...

Once used mostly in clinical settings such as hospitals and geriatric care centers, canine animal-assisted therapy programs have become increasingly commonplace on university campuses to reduce stress and support students’ social and emotional well-being. Researchers responding to the call for increased empirical rigor in studies assessing the effe...

This paper proposes a mutually beneficial model of collaboration between veterinarians and canine therapy programs. Veterinarians and the clinics for whom they work routinely establish collaborations with multiple and varied stakeholders. This might include a laboratory for processing samples and the corresponding courier company needed to deliver...

Background: Increasingly colleges and universities are offering canine therapy to help students de-stress as a means of supporting students’ emotional health and mental well-being. Despite the popularity of such programs, there remains a dearth of research attesting to their benefits. Aims: Participants included 1960 students at a mid-size western...

The aim of this exploratory study was to examine fourth to eighth graders’ conceptualizations of kindness at school (i.e., their definition of kindness, an example of an act of kindness they have done, who they see as the most salient adult agent of kindness, and which location they deem that kindness happens most). To date, kindness research has f...

The demand for support for families impacted by Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) continues to grow, and one increasingly popular avenue of support is the use of companion canines. Parents searching for service canines trained to work with children with ASD, however, face formidable obstacles surrounding the availability and cost of canines. Due to th...

University students with elevated stress levels are at risk for experiencing compromised mental health and for underperforming academically. In an effort to support student wellbeing, post-secondary campuses are increasingly offering canine therapy programs. These programs provide students opportunities to interact with dogs known for their calm pu...

In this study, we sought to create and validate a brief measure to assess students’ perceptions of kindness in school. Participants included 1,753 students in Grades 4 to 8 attending public schools in a large school district in southern British Columbia. The School Kindness Scale (SKS) demonstrated a unidimensional factor structure and adequate int...

The aim of this research was to examine kindergarten to 12th grade teachers‟ (N = 257) perceptions of school kindness. Teachers were asked to define kindness, provide examples of kindness they had done and received, identify key agents of kindness, and rate the quality of kind acts within their schools. Findings indicate that teachers define and en...

p>This study examined how students in kindergarten through third grade conceptualized kindness in school. Participants were asked to draw two pictures: one of themselves doing something kind at school, and one of a teacher doing something kind. Students’ drawings of their kindness reflected themes of maintaining friendships, physically helping othe...

Transitioning from high school to university can prove to be a formidable challenge for many first-year students, with many experiencing homesickness. Given that students who experience homesickness are more likely than their non-homesick cohorts to drop out of university (Burt, 1993), universities have a vested interest in supporting students duri...

This exploratory mixed-methods study examined the influence of an on-campus canine therapy program on linguistically diverse international students' perceptions of their English language development and stress. Participants were recruited from English language support classes at a mid-size western Canadian university and were randomly selected from...

The Art of Kindness Being kind or acting kindly toward others is a trait held in high regard by parents and teachers alike as the educational landscape shifts from a singular focus on academics to the inclusion of instruction in social and emotional competencies (Jennings & lack the requisite intra-and interpersonal skills needed for social is much...

Much has been written about random acts of kindness – acts performed spontaneously and often to strangers. The topic of kindness and the benefits arising from performing kind acts holds both empirical and applied interest in the fields of education and psychology. Encouraging students to reflect upon and perform intentional acts of kindness develop...

This chapter explores the link between the promotion of eHealth (the use of information and communication technologies such as computers and mobile phones, to deliver health-care services) and its impact on the public’s ability to access the types of knowledge and services they need. Not involving the public and patients in designing eHealth servic...

This study examined two distinct moral reasoning interventions: an interindividual intervention, in which students discussed moral dilemmas, and an intraindividual intervention, in which students individually reflected on moral dilemmas. Ninety-seven 6th- and 7th-grade students were administered pre- and posttest measures of the Sociomoral Reflecti...