Repurposing a Peer-Reviewed Publication to Engage Students in Statistics: An Illustration of Study Design, Data Collection, and Analysis

Engaging and motivating students in undergraduate statistics courses can be enhanced by using topical peer-reviewed publications for analyses as part of course assignments. Given the popularity of on-campus therapy dog stress-reduction programs, this topic fosters buy-in from students whilst providing information regarding the importance of mental health and well-being as it impacts learning. This article describes how instructors can use a study on the benefits of human-dog interactions to teach students about study design, data collection and ethics, and hypothesis testing. The data and research questions are accessible to students without requiring detailed subject-area knowledge. Students can think carefully about how to collect and analyze data from a randomized controlled trial with two-sample hypothesis tests. Instructors can use these data for short in-class examples or longer assignments and assessments, and throughout this article, we suggest activities and discussion questions. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.