Modeling Animal Shelter Volunteer Satisfaction: The Importance of Internal Policies.

This research examines the predictors of volunteer satisfaction in animal shelters. It assesses the relative importance of volunteer demographics, the attributes of the shelter, and the policies and procedures governing the volunteer experience. Volunteering takes place within organizational contexts creating a dynamic relationship between the individual and the organization. The study compares the importance of volunteer and organizational traits and organizational policies in volunteer satisfaction. Based on a survey of 651 animal shelter volunteers, it concludes that policies and procedures under the control of the organization are most important in contributing to volunteer satisfaction.

Understanding Dog Bites: The Important Role of Human Behavior.

This research contributes to extant knowledge about dog bites by using police department bite incident data to explore three sets of potential correlates of bites: traits of the victim, traits of the dog including the circumstances surrounding the bite, and traits of the neighborhood in which the bite occurred. It employs data on 478 bites, over a period of 8 years, in an urban setting that includes significant numbers of roaming dogs (both feral and owned), and incorporates a number of variables not included in past research. While environmental variables such as structural abandonment contribute to dog bite risk human error is most commonly at fault.

Animal Cruelty and Neighborhood Conditions.

BACKGROUND: Animal cruelty appears to be widespread. Competing theories have been posed regarding the causes of animal cruelty leading to conflicting findings and little direction for public policies to combat it. OBJECTIVE: To assess the applicability of extant theories of the causes of animal cruelty: domestic violence; deviance; perpetrator traits; and social disorganization. METHODS: Data are drawn from police department reports of animal cruelty in the City of Detroit from 2007 to 2015; 302 incidences of animal cruelty were reported. Multiple regression is used to determine the theory which best appears to account for animal cruelty. RESULTS: Common types of animal cruelty in Detroit are shooting; blunt force trauma; neglect; and dogfighting. While most incidents involve unknown persons; cruelty by owners; neighbors; and domestic partners is also common. Neighborhood conditions in terms of economic stress; vacancy and blight; and crime appear to have the greatest impact on animal cruelty. CONCLUSIONS: The findings from Detroit support deviance and social disorganization theories of animal cruelty. Neighborhood conditions in terms of economic stress, vacancy and blight, and crime appear to have the greatest impact on animal cruelty in this urban area.

Preventing Dog Bites: It Is Not Only about the Dog.

BACKGROUND: Dog bites can have an array of negative health impacts on victims. Research focusing on the correlates of bites focused on limited sets of variables and produced conflicting findings. OBJECTIVE: To expand knowledge about the correlates of dog bites by exploring a comprehensive set of variables related to the nature of the dog and the circumstances surrounding the bite not commonly explored in extant research. METHODS: Data were drawn from police department reports of dog bites in the city of Detroit between 2007-2015; 478 dog bites were reported. Multiple regression was used to determine the significant correlates of dog bites, focusing on the nature of the dog and the circumstances surrounding the bite. RESULTS: Bites were caused by a neighborhood dog. Thirty-two percent of the reports involved dogs running loose; 25% dogs that had escaped from a fenced or unfenced yard; 9% escaped from their home; and 8% had broken off a chain, were being walked, or were in their own home. Based on multiple regression, the victim was most likely bitten in their own yard by a single neighborhood dog that escaped from its home or yard. Breed of dog was not correlated with bites in multiple regression. CONCLUSIONS: The greatest risk of bites does not come from wandering feral dogs. Based on multiple regression, the victim was most likely bitten in their own yard by a single neighborhood dog that escaped from its home or yard. Human error often contributes to bites.

Data on sentiments and emotions of olympic-themed tweets.

Two code files and one dataset related to Olympic Twitter activity are the foundation for this article. Through Twitter's Spritzer streaming API (Application Programming Interface), we collected over 430 million tweets from May 12th, 2016 to September 12th, 2016 windowing the Rio de Janeiro Olympics and Paralympics. We cleaned and filtered these tweets to contain Olympic-related content. We then analyzed the raw data of 21,218,652 tweets including location data, language, and tweet content to distill the sentiment and emotions of Twitter users pertaining to the Olympic Games Kassens-Noor E. et al., 2019. We generalized the original data set to comply with the Twitter's Terms of Service and Developer agreement, 2018. We present the modified dataset and accompanying code files in this article to suggest using both for further analysis on sentiment and emotions related to the Rio de Janeiro Olympics and for comparative research on imagery and perceptions of other Olympic Games.

Demographic and urban environmental variables associated with dog bites in Detroit.

OBJECTIVE: To identify demographic and urban environmental variables associated with prevalence rates of dog bites per zip code in Detroit. DESIGN: Retrospective ecological study. SAMPLE: 6,540 people who visited any 1 of 15 hospital emergency rooms in the 29 zip codes in Detroit between January 1, 2006, and December 31, 2013, with a primary complaint of dog bite. PROCEDURES: The number of dog bites over the study period was determined per zip code. Data for the human population in each zip code in 2011 and demographic and urban environmental variables were obtained from federal, state, and municipal databases. The prevalence rate of dog bites in each zip code was calculated, and regression analysis was used to identify variables associated with this outcome. RESULTS: Results of multivariate analysis indicated that demographic variables (eg, gender, age, and education) accounted for 23.2% (adjusted R2 = 0.232) of the variation in prevalence rates of dog bites per zip code, whereas urban environmental variables (eg, blight, crime with weapons, and vacancy rate) accounted for 51.6% (adjusted R2 = 0.516) of the variation. CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE: Findings suggested that demographic variables had poor association with variation in prevalence rates of dog bites per zip code, whereas urban environmental variables, particularly crime, vacancy rate, and blight, were better associated. Thus, public health and education policies need to address these urban environmental issues to lower the prevalence of dog bites in distressed urban areas.

Neonatal mortality in East Africa and West Africa: a geographic analysis of district-level demographic and health survey data.

Under-five child mortality declined 47% since 2000 following the implementation of the United Nation's (UN) Millennium Development Goals. To further reduce under-five child mortality, the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will focus on interventions to address neonatal mortality, a major contributor of under-five mortality. The African region has the highest neonatal mortality rate (28.0 per 1000 live births), followed by that of the Eastern Mediterranean (26.6) and South-East Asia (24.3). This study used the Demographic and Health Survey Birth Recode data (http://dhsprogram.com/data/File-Types-and-Names.cfm) to identify high-risk districts and countries for neonatal mortality in two sub-regions of Africa - East Africa and West Africa. Geographically weighted Poisson regression models were estimated to capture the spatially varying relationships between neonatal mortality and dimensions of potential need i) care around the time of delivery, ii) maternal education, and iii) women's empowerment. In East Africa, neonatal mortality was significantly associated with home births, mothers without an education and mothers whose husbands decided on contraceptive practices, controlling for rural residency. In West Africa, neonatal mortality was also significantly associated with home births, mothers with a primary education and mothers who did not want or plan their last child. Importantly, neonatal mortality associated with home deliveries were explained by maternal exposure to unprotected water sources in East Africa and older maternal age and female sex of infants in West Africa. Future SDG-interventions may target these dimensions of need in priority high-risk districts and countries, to further reduce the burden of neonatal mortality in Africa.

A geographic analysis of population density thresholds in the influenza pandemic of 1918-19.

BACKGROUND: Geographic variables play an important role in the study of epidemics. The role of one such variable, population density, in the spread of influenza is controversial. Prior studies have tested for such a role using arbitrary thresholds for population density above or below which places are hypothesized to have higher or lower mortality. The results of such studies are mixed. The objective of this study is to estimate, rather than assume, a threshold level of population density that separates low-density regions from high-density regions on the basis of population loss during an influenza pandemic. We study the case of the influenza pandemic of 1918-19 in India, where over 15 million people died in the short span of less than one year. METHODS: Using data from six censuses for 199 districts of India (n=1194), the country with the largest number of deaths from the influenza of 1918-19, we use a sample-splitting method embedded within a population growth model that explicitly quantifies population loss from the pandemic to estimate a threshold level of population density that separates low-density districts from high-density districts. RESULTS: The results demonstrate a threshold level of population density of 175 people per square mile. A concurrent finding is that districts on the low side of the threshold experienced rates of population loss (3.72%) that were lower than districts on the high side of the threshold (4.69%). CONCLUSIONS: This paper introduces a useful analytic tool to the health geographic literature. It illustrates an application of the tool to demonstrate that it can be useful for pandemic awareness and preparedness efforts. Specifically, it estimates a level of population density above which policies to socially distance, redistribute or quarantine populations are likely to be more effective than they are for areas with population densities that lie below the threshold.