The Research Plan

Julie-Ann Ogilvy
The research plan
A. Rationale / relevance of the project

For the project, I plan on doing a case study on how hippotherapy can have a positive
effect on students suffering with anxiety related to many different spheres of their lives. I
plan on doing this because there are no hippotherapy centers around Montreal, most of
them are in the United States, and because of Covid, I can’t go do them outside of the
country. This means that doing a case study with a small group could be beneficial for
me. To do so, I plan on possibly using my own horses to conduct the study.
A research project like this one is useful because hippotherapy, also known as equine-
assisted therapy, is something that not many people know exist, meaning that they do not
know the benefits that this can bring to someone that is suffering from either anxiety,
PTSD symptoms, or any other physical or mental health issue that needs some sort of
therapy to help treat. This would mean that this research project would be beneficial for
anyone who is suffering or has previously suffered from any mental of even physical
disability, and that is seeking a different form of help, that may also bring more comfort
than going to see a therapist in a clinical environment.
B. Research question
Can hippotherapy improve the anxiety symptoms of cegep students?
Operational definitions
Hippotherapy: it is the use of horseback riding or manipulating horses in therapy
Anxiety: it is a feeling of constant stress about what is to come
Cegep students: students that are currently enrolled in a cegep program
C. Research hypothesis
I believe that hippotherapy will have a positive impact on cegep students’ stress levels.
Positive impact: it will bring an improvement to the person

Stress levels: how much stress they feel
D. Primary gathering methods

Source 1
Equine-Assisted Therapy for Anxiety and Posttraumatic Symptoms
PDF: http://web.b.ebscohost.com.res.banq.qc.ca/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?
vid=7&sid=30aac317-bc47-42c6-9bcb-e43510e2c9fb%40pdc-v-sessmgr05
Usefulness of the source

This source is useful because its main conclusions were how hippotherapy will affect a
person who suffers from anxiety (and also from PTSD, but this not what the case study
will look at). By having a research that has already had a look on how the brain is
affected by equine-assisted therapy and how it affects the patients anxiety symptoms over
the course of the experiment, this gives a good look on how the possible results of the
case study could turn out, and it also proves that the research hypothesis will be able to be
answered at the end of the study.
Steps
 The researchers recruited the participants through mental health practitioners.
 They got their study approved by the Institutional Review Board of Florida Atlantic
University.
 They got the participants to answer baseline questionnaires.
 They used many different questionnaires to gather data beforehand to be able to
properly analyze how the therapy would help.
 During the study, the participants would have one equine-assisted therapy session per
week, for a total of six consecutive weeks.
 After gathering all the data, the researchers were able to analyze how the symptoms
dropped significantly after the therapy.
Research limitations
This source had a few limitations, such as the fact that is lacked a control group and the
participants were not asked any follow-up data. The lack of a control group is a limitation
to the research because it does not allow the researchers the possibility to compare two
different groups that experienced two different experiments. Also, the fact that the
participants were not asked any follow-up data is a limitation because this could mean
that the results that were concluded from this research could just be short-term. This
would mean that the overall results are altered, because if the effects are only short-term,
it would mean that this type of therapy might not be as successful as the researchers have
thought.
Source 2
Equine Assisted Therapy for Patients with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder: A Case Series
Study
PDF: http://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=4&sid=8e0387fc-
4411-40be-9874-50f1f6b2a1c3%40sdc-v-sessmgr02
Usefulness
This source is considered useful because it is a case study that was done on hippotherapy.
Even if the point of this case study was not the exact same research topic as the case
study that will be conducted, it gives an idea on how the case study done on how anxiety
affects students might turn out. Having a case study that has already been conducted will
allow the case study on anxiety to follow similar steps, to make sure that it is on the right
track. Also, having an article that has already done a case study on hippotherapy proves
that a case study is actually possible, meaning that I would not need to conduct a full-on
experiment with many participants, and that just a few, serious participants will be
enough to get promising results.
Steps
 The researchers got the study approved by the internal Review Board of Abarbanel
Mental Health Center in Israel.
 They recruited 23 patients that suffered from PTSD symptoms to take part in the case
study.
 They got the participants to answer baseline questionnaires.
 During the study, they had the patients get in contact with the horses, either by riding
them, handling them, or grooming them.
 The participants did so for 3 consecutive hours once a week over a period of 6 months.
 To analyse the data they gathered, they used two different scales: the SPRINT scale
and the SDS scale.
 The SPRINT scale examines the core symptoms of PTSD.
 The SDS scale is a short questionnaire the evaluate how much the disorder affects the
patient on a functional level.
 They used the scales and the data collected to come to a conclusion that equine-
assisted therapy did have a positive impact on the participants’ mental health.
Research limitations
This research had a few limitations, such as the lack of a control group and a poor
completion rate. The lack of a control group is a limitation to the research because it cuts
off the possibility to compare a group that experienced the hippotherapy versus a group
that experienced human to human therapy on its own. Also, the poor completion rate is
considered a limitation because the researchers were not able to get the results from the
full group that they had in the beginning. This means that the conclusions they found
could have varied if they had the entire group go through with the case study from the
beginning to the end.
Compare the two articles

The two articles are both very helpful in the midst of conducting a case study on how
hippotherapy can help cegep students with their anxiety. They each have their own
characteristics that can help guide the research in the right direction. For example, the
second article is a case study, so the steps are going to be similar to that one. And for the
first article, it was done to study the effects hippotherapy has on anxiety, which is the
subject of the case study that is going to be conducted. But overall, I believe that the
article that will be the most helpful is the first one, mainly because the subjects are the
same. This is the most helpful, because it gives a good base to the case study I want to
conduct, meaning that I know, from the start, that there is a possibility that the results that
will be concluded from the case study will be similar to the ones collected in that research
article.
E. Specific study steps

 The first step would be to find more pre-existing data on the subject, so I would need
to do a literature review to gather more information on hippotherapy and the correlation it
has with anxiety symptoms.
 Next, I would need to properly find the methodology I will use to conduct the case
study.
 Next, I would need to determine who the participants will be; to do so, I could ask
students to fill out a questionnaire to find the best candidates for the case study.
 After, I would get the chosen participants to answer baseline questionnaires to gather
data on their levels of anxiety before experiencing any therapy with the horses.
 The, I would conduct the study, meaning I would get the students to experience
hippotherapy.
 I would then collect the necessary data to compare the baseline questionnaires to how
their symptoms are after the therapy.
 The I would need to analyse and describe the results.

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Julie-Ann Ogilvy

The research plan

A. Rationale / relevance of the project

Positive impact: it will bring an improvement to the person

D. Primary gathering methods

Usefulness of the source

Compare the two articles

E. Specific study steps

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