Do Video Materials Help Parents to Support Infant Development?

University of Sheffield

Status: Unknown

Conditions: Language Development

Treatments: Behavioral: BBC Education Tiny Happy People videos; Behavioral: Physical health control intervention

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT04919343

165718

Details and patient eligibility

About

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.

Full 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).

Enrollment: 435 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 4 to 9 months old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

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

Trial design

Primary purpose: Basic Science

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Quadruple Blind

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435 participants in 2 patient groups

BBC Tiny Happy People intervention

Experimental group

Description:

Parents will be sent links each month directing them to BBC Tiny Happy People content via SMS text message using the secure service FireText. This content will be aimed at supporting language development. Parents will be asked to watch the video content and incorporate it into their parenting practices. The intervention will start when infants are aged 4-9 months and conclude when they are 18 months with a follow up to 24 months where time permits.

Treatment:

Behavioral: BBC Education Tiny Happy People videos

Physical health control

Active Comparator group

Description:

Similar to the experimental condition, parents will be sent links each month via SMS text message using FireText. These links will direct them to publicly available web content with tips to promote the healthy development of their baby, focusing on things such as healthy eating, physical activities, and dental care. The intervention will start when infants are aged 4-9 months and conclude when they are 18 months with a follow up to 24 months where time permits

Treatment:

Behavioral: Physical health control intervention