Table 3.

Akaike’s information criterion (AIC) for each step in the regression predicting petting using backward regression.

Step	df	Deviance	Residual df	Residual deviance	AIC
Full model	NA	NA	84	69857.28	664.21
Dog support	1	9.91	85	69867.19	662.22
Child sex	1	242.34	86	70109.53	660.56
Breed	5	6680.03	91	76789.56	659.39
Negative interaction mom	1	373.48	92	77163.05	657.86
Mom support	1	517.13	93	77680.18	656.51

Values are shown for each variable successively dropped from the model to achieve the best fitting results.