Do Video Materials Help Parents to Support Infant Development?

Language Development Clinical Trial

Official title:

A Randomised Controlled Trial to Evaluate the Efficacy of BBC Education's Tiny Happy People Content in Supporting Infant Language Development.

Clinical Trial Details — Status: Active, not recruiting

Administrative data

• NCT number: NCT04919343
• Other study ID #: 165718
• Status: Active, not recruiting
• Phase: N/A
• Start date: September 14, 2021
• Est. completion date: May 31, 2023

Study information

• Verified date: April 2022
• Source: University of Sheffield
• Contact: n/a
• Is FDA regulated: No
• Study type: Interventional

Clinical Trial Summary

The aim of this project is to assess whether video materials from the BBC Tiny Happy People (THP) campaign are effective in terms of improving the language skills of socioeconomically disadvantaged children before they start school. This project will also look at how useable the service is for parents in terms of acceptability, effects on self-efficacy and implementation of advice.

Description:

The current study will evaluate BBC Education's Tiny Happy People initiative (https://www.bbc.co.uk/tiny-happy-people) which seeks to reduce the impact of social and economic disadvantage on children's language skills before they arrive at primary school. BBC Education have created videos for parents and other caregivers with information about child development, tips and activities as well as other content of interest. The aim of the evaluation is to find out how parents feel about the materials and whether the videos promote a) caregiver confidence at 12, 18 and 24 months, b) caregiver-infant interaction at 12, 18 and 24 months and c) child language at 18 and 24 months. The primary outcome is expressive vocabulary size at 17-18 months. Families with 4- to 9-month-old infants who would like to take part will be randomly allocated either to a language support group or a physical health active control group and sent short, age-appropriate advice videos by text message three times a month until their children are 18 months old (with follow up videos for children until the age of 2 years where possible given study time limits).

Recruitment information / eligibility

• Status: Active, not recruiting
• Enrollment: 435
• Est. completion date: May 31, 2023
• Est. primary completion date: November 30, 2022
• Accepts healthy volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers
• Gender: All
• Age group: 4 Months to 9 Months

Eligibility

Inclusion Criteria:

Families must:

• be raising their child as a monolingual English speaker (at least 80% of the language they hear in the home is English)
• have a postcode in deciles 1-5 of the Office of National Statistics Index of Multiple Deprivation
• have access to the internet and a device to watch videos (via smart phone)

Infants must:

• be full term
• have a healthy birthweight Exclusion Criteria: Neither caregivers nor infants must have any significant known physical, mental or learning disability

Related Conditions & MeSH terms

• Language Development

Intervention

Behavioral:
• BBC Education Tiny Happy People videos
This intervention involves regular texting of BBC Education Tiny Happy People videos to parents
• Physical health control intervention
This intervention involves regular texting of publicly available videos about supporting infant physical and dental health to parents

Locations

Country	Name	City	State
United Kingdom	University of Sheffield	Sheffield	South Yorkshire

Sponsors (4)

Lead Sponsor	Collaborator
University of Sheffield	University of Liverpool, University of Manchester, University of Melbourne

Country where clinical trial is conducted

United Kingdom, 

Outcome

Type	Measure	Description	Time frame	Safety issue
Other	Intervention uptake - number of video links that were clicked on	Parents will be sent regular text messages with links to videos with information about supporting child language or physical health. We will take % of links clicked as a fidelity measure. We will check whether parents were more likely to click though to these links in one condition or the other and run a Complier Average Causal Effect analysis.	Clicking on a video link within one month of it being sent
Primary	18 month expressive vocabulary	Infant expressive vocabulary, assessed using the communicative development inventory (CDI) at 18 months	2 months. Parents will complete the report within 2 months of the infant turning 18 months old.
Secondary	Caregiver responsive behaviour at 12, 18 and 24 months	Parents willing and able to upload a 5-minute video of a play time with their child will have the option to do so. A researcher will code the video using the PaRRis rating scale.	Measures will be collected within 2 months of the child turning 12, 18 and 24 months
Secondary	Caregiver self-efficacy at 12, 18 and 24 months	Parents will be sent a self-efficacy questionnaire to complete in the format of a qualtrics survey, via SMS text message at each time point. Questions will focus on how parents feel about their parenting in general and supporting their child's language development and physical health.	Measures will be collected within 2 months of the child turning 12, 18 and 24 months
Secondary	24 month expressive vocabulary	Infant expressive vocabulary, assessed using the communicative development inventory (CDI) at 24 months	3 months. Parents will complete the report within 3 months of the infant turning 24 months old.

External Links

•   Website hosting content for parents in language intervention arm