Animal-assisted therapy: A scientometric analysis

Abstract

Animal Assisted Therapy (AAT) is the use of animals for human therapeutic purposes, that is, an animal is selected that after being trained will interact for long periods with the patient and perform exercises supervised by professionals. The objective of this study was to carry out a quantitative analysis of the scientific production on AAT in the period 2000 to 2019 in order to answer some questions, such as: Has the work on AAT been increasing over the years? Which authors, institutions, scientific journals, and countries stand out in these publications? What are the most used organisms in AAT and the target audience in the selected studies? Using the Scopus database, 853 scientific articles published on TAA in the researched period were collected. The study revealed that publications on AAT showed an upward trend ranging from 8 studies in 2001 to 137 in 2019. Dogs (303 studies) and horses (59 studies) were the most used animals in AAT in the articles surveyed. Thus, the characterization and quantification of scientific production on Animal Assisted Therapy demonstrated an important tool to assess the dissemination of this therapeutic method worldwide.