Dawn C. Carr (@DawnCCarr) is the Director of the Claude Pepper Center and an associate professor at Florida State University in the Department of Sociology. Carr is a thought leader in the field of aging, and regularly presents her research to a range of audiences through keynote speeches, policy-related presentations, and seminars with older adults and practitioners. Carr’s research focuses on understanding the factors that bolster older adults’ ability to remain healthy and active as long as possible. Much of her work is dedicated to exploring the relevance, purpose, and factors related to work engagement after age 50 and volunteer engagement. Her recent work focuses on understanding the complex pathways between health and active engagement during later life, including resilience and the impact of key transitions in health, productivity, and caregiving.
Episode Description
At the COVID pandemic’s seeming height, social media were filled with images and stories of people adopting pets. Individuals who might not have had time for a dog or a cat before lockdown suddenly did. Needing to walk a dog also gave people a reason to leave their homes at regular intervals. For some older adults with dogs, those regular strolls around the neighborhood may have helped keep them from having increased feelings of loneliness. That’s the focus of this episode of Stats and Stories with guest Dawn Carr.
+Timestamps
How did this study come about? (1:45) How do you define loneliness? (3:20) Why dog walking? (5:00) What Kind of Data did you collect and how is it measured? (8:30) What is causing this amount of loneliness (17:23) What’s next? (20:07)
+Full Transcript
Rosemary Pennington
At the COVID pandemic's seeming height, social media were filled with images and stories of people adopting pets. Individuals who might not have had time for a dog or a cat before locked down suddenly did. Needing to walk a dog also gave people a reason to leave their homes at regular intervals. For some older adults with dogs, those regular strolls around the neighborhood may have helped keep them from having increased feelings of loneliness. That's the focus of this episode of Stats and Stories where we explore the statistics behind the stories and the stories behind the statistics. I'm Rosemary Pennington. Stats and Stories is a production of Miami University's Department of Statistics and media, journalism and film, as well as the American Statistical Association. Joining me is regular panelist John Bailer, emeritus professor of statistics at Miami University. Our guest today is Dr. Dawn Carr, the director of the Claude Pepper Center, and an associate professor at Florida State University in the Department of Sociology. Her research focuses on understanding the factors that bolster older adults' ability to remain healthy, inactive, as long as possible. Carr’s recent work focuses on understanding the complex pathways between health and active engagement during later life, including resilience and the impact of key transitions in health, productivity, and caregiving. She's also a co-author of a journal article and animals that examined the impact of dog walking on the experience of loneliness for older adults during COVID. Dawn, thank you so much for joining us today.
Dawn Carr
Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.
Rosemary Pennington
What spurred this study about dog walking and COVID and loneliness?
Dawn Carr
A couple of different things. For a long time, they've been very interested in figuring out different things that could help older people thrive in later life. And loneliness is a factor that has been increasingly important. So there's a lot of media attention, because unexpectedly, I think we've become more aware of the fact that loneliness increases our risk of mortality, there was a really famous meta analysis in 2010 that talked about this linkage between loneliness, and mortality relative to other stuff that we know is bad for you. And in that study by Dr. Holt, Linstead, they made the comparison and noted that loneliness is as bad for your health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Oh, wow. So this is kind of a famous statistic that people like to kind of throw around and give you kind of an approximate understanding of it, the consequences. So loneliness and later life is an important thing to look at. And the other thing that's important is that what do people think about their health and well being, but they often think of it in terms of exercise, or, you know, not drinking too much, or, you know, not eating junk food, but actually your social health is as impactful or more impactful on how well you, you know, your life, the quality of your life, and the length of your life is, then all these other factors. So I think it's often a neglected area of study. And it's been something I've been very interested in learning more about for a long time.
John Bailer
I'd like to just follow up a little bit in terms of, you know, unpacking some of the components of the work that you were doing. I mean, so how, how do you define loneliness? How do you measure loneliness? I mean, we all have sort of this, this kind of individual understanding of it. But as you start to study it in a formal way, you have to kind of get some kind of standardized definition, I would assume. So how is that defined?
Dawn Carr
Yeah, there are different ways of measuring loneliness, you can ask a person, how lonely Do you feel. And then there's different survey instruments that we use. And I do research with surveys, primarily, the most commonly used index is something called the UCLA loneliness index. That's what I tend to use. And there's different multi items that you can draw from this particular paper that you're talking about using a three item measure set, it's not a lot of items, but it has really great validity. But basically, what people ask is, are you getting the social connectedness with others that you need to feel good? I mean, that's kind of an oversimplification, but this is individualized. So you might be saying that you can be lonely, because you're not engaging enough with other people. But some people are quite isolated and don't feel lonely, they feel fine. Others are in a crowd and feel completely lonely, right, you can be constantly surrounded by people. So it's related to your sense of connection with, with other people typically. So it's hard to sort of grasp in some ways, but at the same time, if you ask a person, do you feel lonely? They're reflecting on that connection that they have with other people, and do they feel like they matter and they're part of a kind of a social whole group.
Rosemary Pennington
So why dog walking? What made that be the thing that you and your co authors decided, like, we're going to explore this.
Dawn Carr
So I actually had some previous work that I did that was funded by the Wellcome Institute, and the Gerontological Society of America with a colleague, who's on this paper, Natalie sacks, Erickson. And she had a background studying the benefits of pet therapy, as she's a clinical psychologist, and was really interested in seeing how pets could be supportive to people with various psychological challenges. And she liked my work on loneliness, and had heard me, I was a new professor at the time. And I had given a talk on loneliness and widowhood. And she said, I have an idea. Why don't we put our research interests together and, and do the study. And so in that earlier study that we got a grant for, we were looking at whether just having a pet was beneficial. The challenges of studying are really interesting, because the kind of people who get a dog are not the same as the people who don't. And that may or may not be related to whether it's good for you, right? So, parsing that out is really complicated. And so we were among the first people in that study to say, what if you control for the selection into being a person who gets a dog versus one who selectively chooses not to, and, and be able to differentiate the health benefits that come from that? So we were able to do that. And this was kind of an additional study were like, Well, what about dog walking, and especially during the pandemic? I don't know about you, but in my neighborhood, people were like, I'm home, I gotta get out of the house. Oh, my gosh. And walking became something I had never done that much of, but suddenly, I was walking every day. And it was such a relief to get out of the house.
Rosemary Pennington
Yeah, my neighborhood was filled with people, like, we never see each other, you know. And now though, it's sort of moving towards normal pre pandemic, it's sort of quiet again. But there were like, six months where there were people constantly walking around the neighborhood.
Dawn Carr
Yeah, yeah. So that's what came to mind. And almost everyone we saw was walking their dog. And you know, you don't know. Is it the walking that's good for you? Or is it the fact that it's a dog? We, you know, of course, we can't know that for certain. But in this study, we actually did tests like just exercise. And this was not a factor. Loneliness wasn't affected by just exercise. It seemed to be something special about the dog. So we were curious about that. Because I don't know, if you have a dog, I have a dog. If I go out and I walk, my dog has a cute dog. I think he's skinny. I take a walk with them. And people, oh, what's your dog's name? And there's this human connection that emerges? It's an icebreaker. It is. Yeah, people love to talk about their pets. But you don't typically walk a cat. Right? Yeah. So it's a way of sort of creating connection in a safe environment during COVID. We couldn't hang out together. And you might actually meet strangers. And maybe, maybe strangers could be helpful for loneliness. Maybe not. But I think in this particular time, we didn't have those regular get togethers with, with loved ones, with friends. And this might have been like, just what you needed to fill up your social needs for the day and just sort of feel better. And that's, that's what we hypothesized.
John Bailer
You know, it's funny, because when I was working at home, I was taking my dog out frequently for walks whenever it breaks. And finally, the dog was sort of looking at me like, Dude, I don't walk, you know, it's like, How about I'll stay here? And you go out, you know, that? Was it gotten to the point? Yeah, she was done. Like, I'm done. I'm done with your power. But it's interesting. And I think this, this, the, the phrase you use were sort of disentangling, unpacking kind of these effects, because, you know, there's this, to me when I think about this is I think about, well, there's the walking part of it. But there's also the pet ownership part. I mean, it may be that just even if you're not able to walk a dog, or you're not inclined to walk a dog, by having it as this companion animal, there's that there's a benefit there in terms of the loneliness effect. And then there's the walking dog beyond that. So it's, it's, it seems like there's really it's there's a lot of complexity. Now, one of the things in your paper that you described was you had a model, so sort of a theoretical model that talked about, you know, how you thought loneliness might respond to this activity. Can you talk a lot about what was sort of the theoretical grounding of a project like this, and then we can talk a look maybe at the data that was obtained and analysis?
Dawn Carr
Yeah, sure. So some of my co authors also are really quite well known. There's, there's some of the most famous in this area in terms of research on pets, and a lot in different forms of pet therapy. Nancy G. Who, who is an author here, actually runs this really Famous pet therapy program at a hospital in Virginia. She's doing some really interesting work. And it was a really good group of colleagues who'd had this sort of deep knowledge and understanding. And Erica Friedman as well as really well known for, for her work kind of parsing out these effects. Anyway, so what they have found with their work, and then what Natalie and I had found with ours, and we have other colleagues here, too, but I was just going to point out, there's, they have done quite a bit of research showing that pets decrease stress response. So we were using a biopsychosocial model, which is a common one to use in this type of research. And the idea being that there's biological factors at play, which are these sort of stress responses, you know, you think about cortisol in your system, things like that. And that the psychological effects are related to how you're sort of feeling and how in king of the world you're in, and then the social environment affects all of this. So we're seeing all these things kind of come together. And that would sort of explain how pets could be beneficial. And, and you can't, you know, we don't, we didn't take blood samples to see if the pets are stressed. And, you know, the people walk. So we didn't look at all of that. But based on previous research, there's a good bit of research that shows really simple engagements with pets, decrease your stress levels in the moment, and they've been really beneficial. So there's a couple of kinds of factors there, you feel calm, you know, think about petting, petting your companion, animal, cat, dog, it has a soothing sort of response. Now, walking isn't the same. We're not talking about that. But just owning the pet has this built in connection like this is this thing that I deeply care about? That relies on me to survive and an IT, I have to take care of it? And it needs me. And that sense of mattering is also a big piece of the puzzle. Right? Yeah, I think that's how we build connections. So we thought, normally you have these things with people, but actually you can do with a pet too.
Rosemary Pennington
You're listening to Stats and Stories. And today we're talking to Florida State University's Dawn Carr.
John Bailer
So you've, you've kind of given us this, this kind of how things were defined a little bit about the loneliness scale, you've talked a little bit about the theoretical model that was linking this activity to a reduction of stress within some positive health outcomes anticipated, sort of down downstream. So what, tell us a little bit more about what kind of data you collect? And then as you analyze it, what kind of things did you observe?
Dawn Carr
So we actually have a longitudinal study, my colleague, Natalie and I, and this is based on that longitudinal study. So in 2018, we started this study, we're interested in understanding how your emotional reaction we call emotion regulation, and resiliency factors affect well being. And so we started this longitudinal study of adults living in the Tallahassee area. And we've actually published a number of articles on different aspects of older adults, including and surrounding the pandemic, because we had this amazing accidental right situation where we had this panel dataset that we'd already planned to follow up with. And sure enough, the timing was great. And we were able to follow up with them three months into the pandemic, and then again, six months. So we have this data kind of, in these early phases. And, and I think there's growing evidence that those first three months were different kinds of stressful than the settling in we had six months. And so we're now planning to do another follow up to see how we are sort of recovering? In this post, I guess, post pandemic phase? Is that where we are?
John Bailer
Yeah, yeah. So we're in the pre monkeypox phase?
Dawn Carr
Oh, yeah. I don't know. But we were really interested in just trying to identify what factors mattered and who fared better and who fared worse. And so we tried to figure out how stressed they were, how kind of difficult life was for them. And so in this paper, we actually relied on one particular question that we were really interested in related to loneliness: how much did the pandemic influence your social connectedness with others? And so what we looked at is the people who said, Yeah, my, my sense of social connection with others was significant, or the decline in that was significant. So in other words, I'm not getting the social connectedness that I need. And so we were these vulnerable people, right? Your risk of loneliness goes up if you feel like you've lost your connection to people you're engaged with. And those were the ones in your talk about the news media, about how bad the pandemic is for older people. That's who we were worried about. They're stuck in a house by themselves. They don't have those few social connections. I mean, going to the grocery store. Oh my gosh, Did you forget how fun it was to say hi to that one, you know, person at the grocery store and you're like, Oh, I missed you, you know, you didn't remember how important these smaller engagements were. So this captures kind of broadly your sense. So we were interested in them and their vulnerability. And that's who we focused on.
John Bailer
That's really neat. I, you know, so you're studying this Tallahassee cohort of individuals, so that now, do you think that you or others is going to replicate this in other parts of the country? Or has this been done in other parts of the world? I'm just, it's always an interesting question about, you know, is there this sort of uniqueness to the community that you're studying, and its generalizability?
Dawn Carr
Beyond anything, really, I think it very well could be replicated. But I think that that's obviously a great question. There have been some studies on pets, but they often haven't been robust, nor longitudinal. And by robust, I mean, oftentimes, they're focused on a much smaller sample of people, or more, or really, they're just, it's a single time point, I'm just gonna see who's doing what and so all you see is those associations. So we have this unusual opportunity, in this case, to be able to look at changes in association with a very stressful situation. And so, you know, we are aging, this is like, you talk about the Great Depression and 911. And these big, big things like, we will never forget the pandemic and remember how it affected us. But it affected us differently, depending on our age and life situation. And in this case, this was a very specific experience for older people that was different from people who are much younger, they're much less likely to be going to work or working from home or engaging, you know, they're they don't have those structural connected connections with others that help them. Yeah, I guess, sort of stay in sort of a every day pattern. And that's different and interesting. So I think if people were to replicate it, you know, these are really important contextual things that might need to be considered. So it might be the case that walking a dog doesn't actually help me, because I've got kids at home. And I actually don't have a terribly difficult life, right? But maybe when you're facing really big challenges, that's when it's really clear that these things matter.
Rosemary Pennington
I'd say I wanted to zoom out a little bit away from your state, because there was something in the study, and you mentioned that there's been a lot of coverage about this increase in experiences of loneliness. And I sort of wanted just to pull out a little bit and sort of ask, when we talk about this increase that Americans have reported feeling of feeling lonely, I wonder if we have a good idea of, sort of, what might be motivating that? Or do we just have a better way of measuring and understanding that, like, do we have a good handle on what this increase is actually being spurred by?
Dawn Carr
Yeah, so it sounds to me like you're questioning? Is it a real increase? Or is it like we're able to measure it better? And think that's part of it, we do actually measure these things differently. And there are some really big figures who are talking about it for the first time. So there was, there were a couple of psychologists who were kind of the loneliness experts. I mean, I guess I'm doing some of that now, but they placed a lot of emphasis on measurement and making sure we're capturing it accurately. And I think they did that for a long time. But it wasn't in the mainstream. I don't think people took it that seriously until we started saying, Oh, my gosh, this is actually a really important health kind of measure. You know, and I think it's easy to say, can you go up and down the stairs? Can you feed yourself? I think those are big disabilities, you can't see loneliness, right? I can't necessarily observe it. So it's harder, I think, to sort of study it, you have to study it in context. And by talking to people, and the only way to do that is to ask them how they're feeling. And so I think for a long time, people didn't trust that in the same way, right. And so I think now we're more aware of like, that's valid. But in terms of the increase overall, there's very clear evidence that that loneliness is getting worse. And it's actually not a lot worse for older people, compared to previous cohorts. They're not getting more lonely than previous cohorts of older people. It's the younger people and the middle aged people. So maybe as they get older, that'll change, but there's a lot of speculation that it's related to how we're communicating. And you know, like we're sitting together having a conversation, that gives you a connection and a feeling of being in the moment that's quite different than getting a text message saying how's your day? Not that those aren't important, but it might be not enough to help you to, you know, have that cumulative lack of connection that leads to the feelings of loneliness.
John Bailer
Yeah, I know. I was very excited about the prospect of SP And back in the studio and working, you know, we've been doing some of this zoom.
Dawn Carr
And so of course, everyone's better than that.
John Bailer
Yeah, but I think your point is well taken that there's, it's an approximation to kind of where you'd want to go, or what was more impactful in terms of our experience?
Dawn Carr
Yeah. And I do think like, it's sort of like, I don't know what the right analogy is. But like, if you're filling up your glass of water, and you pretend the water is your like, you know, feeling full, your gas tank is sort of full in terms of feeling connected little bits, maybe help with these in, you know, online engagements that like, when you have a coffee with a friend, it's a bigger, Philip, right. And I think younger people are much more inclined to not have those in person experiences, they are really, really insulted, maybe it's just not enough. So I think there's a lot of people who are going to be doing more work on this, but my colleagues, some colleagues who do a lot of tech and aging kind of research at Florida State, Wiley booth and Neil Chernus. And we've had many discussions about this, because they've been trying to figure out, can we create virtual worlds where we can connect, and help offset loneliness. And there's a lot of effort to figure that out. And I think there's actually a lot of novelty and exciting stuff, developing that we might find a way to do it better. But I think for now, we're not quite there.
John Bailer
I was, you know, you made the comment about things like these activities of daily living. And you know, those are, you mentioned some examples of it. And those are all easy, because you can observe it, you know, either you can take your shower, or you can, you know, there's sort of these, these these things that you can do. And I just was finding myself thinking, Gee, I wonder if there's this, could there be kind of this same social activities of daily living? Yeah, the saddle. I mean, yeah, hey, I've just, I just, I'm gonna say my, my claim now to the saddle. But you know, this idea of, of, you know, there's, there's, I would think there's this gradient of kind of social impact. And I think that was, what's interesting to me is, as you were looking at your analysis, you're thinking about a trajectory of kind of this almost this trajectory towards loneliness or not. And this, this modification of that trajectory based upon some activities, and here it was dog walking, but it could be one could well imagine others. So I've just, I've just tried to picture this new saddle scale, this idea of the social dimension of daily living activities. And so do you have any thought of what else might be in there other than loneliness, if you are going to have this sort of social dimension?
Dawn Carr
Yeah, so like, loneliness would be the low end. And, and there might be other dimensions of a well being or something like that, or, or types of actual activities that you might engage in? You know, I think that this is a really interesting point. So if we were to measure Well, it's worth noting, some people measure this stuff in this very objective way, more observable way, which is, how many times in the last week, have you had a any kind of interaction with another person, and this is considered a measurement of social isolation versus social integration. And that's more objective, and they do see those connections. Loneliness is related, but distinct from that, because it's the emotional component of that. So I liked this idea that you have, I think it'd be messier, right? That's trying to figure out if it is about how often you connect or, you know, and the variations with other people, but I personally think a big piece of the puzzle is about sense of meaning and purpose. And so as much as that's not actually directly a social activity, I think it's related to your social world. And so if you are engaging in activities, where you feel like what you're doing and who you're with matters to the world, this kind of a bigger picture, I think you feel better. And so it may not be how often you're talking to a person, it might be more engaging in activities that matter to other people. Right? It's a little bit different. And I think this is why people often think about, if you have a bad job, you're in a job that just, you don't feel like your job matters. You don't feel like you're impacting the world in a positive way. It's terrible for your mental health. So I think there's a lot of dimensions that are, you know, we probably need to piece kind of parse out from this issue, but I like the direction you're going very much.
Rosemary Pennington
You heard it here first, folks. That's all the time we have for this episode of Stats and Stories. Dawn, thank you so much for joining us today.
Dawn Carr Absolutely. Pleasure.
Rosemary Pennington Stats and Stories is a partnership between Miami University’s Departments of Statistics, and Media, Journalism and Film, and the American Statistical Association. You can follow us on Twitter, Apple podcasts, or other places you can find podcasts. If you’d like to share your thoughts on the program send your email to statsandstories@miamioh.edu or check us out at statsandstories.net, and be sure to listen for future editions of Stats and Stories, where we discuss the statistics behind the stories and the stories behind the statistics.