Prevalence of Enteropathogens in Dogs Attending 3 Regional Dog Parks in Northern California

Hascall, K.L.; Kass, P.H.; Saksen, J.; Ahlmann, A.; Scorza, A.V.; Lappin, M.R.; Marks, S.L.

A power calculation was used to determine the number of dogs to include in this study. Using a binomial infection prevalence of 15% in the higher socioeconomic status (SES) neighborhood park, and hypothesizing a 2.5-fold increase in the prevalence of intestinal parasites in the lower SES park, a sample size of 100 dogs per park was required to achieve 94% power with a type I error of 5%. Kruskal-Wallis tests were used to compare groups with respect to ordered or continuous variables, and Spearman correlation to compare 1 ordered or continuous variable to a second ordered or continuous variable. McNemar's chi-square tests were used to assess test discordance between laboratories and Fischer's exact test was used to evaluate the association among binary variables. All analyses were performed by Stata/IC 13.1 software. a A P-value <.05 was considered significant.