The Impact of Phone Use on Everyday Outcomes

Obesity Clinical Trial

Official title:

The Impact of Phone Use on Everyday Outcomes

Clinical Trial Details — Status: Recruiting

Administrative data

• NCT number: NCT04303637
• Other study ID #: S-18-213
• Status: Recruiting
• Start date: March 25, 2019
• Est. completion date: June 10, 2021

Study information

• Verified date: March 2020
• Source: Yale-NUS College
• Contact: Jean Liu, PhD
• Phone: 66013694
• Email: jeanliu[@]yale-nus.edu.sg
• Is FDA regulated: No
• Study type: Observational

Clinical Trial Summary

Participants will download a phone-tracking app for a week to track phone usage, providing objective data on usage patterns. Quantitative tasks and questionnaires will also be carried out before and after the tracking period.

Description:

A notable shortcoming of existing mobile phone research is that 'phone use' has almost exclusively been measured through subjective reports - by simply asking respondents how much time they spend on their mobile phones each day. This operational definition, however, is a major shortcoming as phone use is difficult to track - and is thus likely to be highly inaccurate.

To address this gap, the investigators describe in this proposal a first step to characterize phone usage in an objective manner - by asking adolescents to download a phone-tracking app for a week. This circumvents measurement errors inherent to self-reports, and allows us to probe: (1) how accurate adolescents' estimates are of their own phone usage, and (2) whether objective phone usage predicts any cognitive, socio-emotional, or physical outcomes. The completion of this study will represent an important step forward in the development of empirically-driven guidelines on phone use amongst adolescents.

Recruitment information / eligibility

• Status: Recruiting
• Enrollment: 1000
• Est. completion date: June 10, 2021
• Est. primary completion date: May 31, 2021
• Accepts healthy volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers
• Gender: All
• Age group: 13 Years to 18 Years

Eligibility

Inclusion Criteria:

• Owns a smartphone

Exclusion Criteria:

• Parents not willing to give consent

• History of medical or psychiatric disorder

• History of motion sickness, dizziness or epilepsy

Related Conditions & MeSH terms

• Anxiety
• Depression
• Obesity
• Sleep

Intervention

Behavioral:
• Phone use
Objective and subjective reports of smartphone use (e.g., number of hours, number of pick-ups, how phones are used)

Locations

Country	Name	City	State
Singapore	Yale-NUS College	Singapore

Sponsors (1)

Lead Sponsor	Collaborator
Yale-NUS College

Country where clinical trial is conducted

Singapore, 

Outcome

Type	Measure	Description	Time frame	Safety issue
Other	General Questionnaire on Media Consumption	A short questionnaire on the usage patterns of various media devices.	5 minutes (single measurement)
Other	Subjective Report of Phone Usage	A 5-item questionnaire that collects data on self-reported phone use patterns.	10 minutes (single measurement)
Primary	Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS 21)	A 21-item, 4-point scale measuring participant emotional states. This is the short form of the longer 42-item DASS.	11 minutes (single measurement)
Primary	Body mass index	Participants' body mass index	1 minute (single measurement)
Primary	Sleep duration	Assessment of participants' sleep time & wake time	2 minute (single measurement)
Secondary	Digit Span Task	A digit span task carried out using a computer program	10 minutes (single measurement)
Secondary	Psychomotor Vigilance Task	PVT carried out using a computer program	10 minutes (single measurement)
Secondary	Pediatric Daytime Sleepiness Scale (PDSS)	A 8-item, 5-point self-report scale to measure sleepiness during the day.	5 minutes (single measurement)
Secondary	Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ)	A questionnaire looking at a student's emotional and behavioural aspects in relation to coping with school.	10 minutes (single measurement)