Fig. 2: The statistically significant interaction between group and department.

Moreover, the patients with a low acceptance of socially assistive robots (b = −0.08, SE = 0.15, p = 0.595) exhibited a slightly higher change in patient engagement if they were in the control group than the intervention group, but the difference was not statistically significant. On the other hand, the patients with a high acceptance of socially assistive robots (b = 0.30, SE = 0.13, p = 0.022*) exhibited a statistically significantly higher change in patient engagement if they were in the intervention group, compared to the control group. This significant interaction is visualized in Fig. 3.