Study of an Online Program to Help Parents Talk With Their Tween Children About Health, Gender, Body-Image, and Relationships

Innovation Research & Training

Status: Completed

Conditions: Parenting; Parent-Child Relations; Communication

Treatments: Behavioral: Active Control Resource; Behavioral: Media Aware Parent - Tween

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other; NIH

Identifiers

NCT06408818

TweenHealthStudy-R21-23-006-01

5R21HD108440-02 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract)

Details and patient eligibility

About

The goal of this study is to learn if Media Aware Parent - Tween, an online program for parents of children ages 9-12, helps parents have effective conversations with their child about health and media.

Full description

Parent-child pairs (N=300 pairs) will be recruited to participate in a randomized controlled trial. Parent consent and parent permission and youth assent will be sought. Participant pairs will be randomized into one of two study arms: intervention and active control. All participants will complete a web-based pre-test questionnaire. Youth and parents will then receive access to their randomly assigned resource. Approximately four weeks after completing the pre-test questionnaire, all participants will complete a web-based post-test questionnaire.

Enrollment: 390 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 9+ years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• The adult must be the legal guardian of a child ages 9 to 12 years old.
• The parent must be able and willing to receive email and text communication as part of the study.
• The parent-child pair must have access to a smartphone with internet connection as the resource review will be completed online in a format that is best viewed on a smartphone.
• The parent-child pair must be fluent in English as the study materials are written in English.
• The parent must indicate that they will give the child participant privacy to complete the questionnaires.
• Both the adult and child must agree to participate.

Exclusion criteria

• Only one parent-child pair per family may participate in the study. If the parent has more than one child aged 9 to 12 that is willing to participate, the parent will be prompted to select the child participant based on the following: if the parent's last name begins with a letter from A to M, select the youngest eligible child willing to participate or if the parent's last name begins with a letter from N to Z, select the oldest eligible child willing to participate.
• In an effort to ensure diversity in parent gender and race/ethnicity, not all eligible pairs who are interested in participating will be enrolled in the study.

Trial design

Primary purpose: Prevention

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Double Blind

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390 participants in 2 patient groups

Intervention Program: Media Aware Parent -Tween

Experimental group

Description:

Participants will have access to an intervention between pre-test and post-test assessments. The intervention, Media Aware Parent -Tween, is an online program for parents of tweens ages 9-12 designed to help parents have effective conversations with their child about body image, sexual development, gender stereotypes, romantic relationships, and media.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Media Aware Parent - Tween

Active Control Resource

Active Comparator group

Description:

Parents will have access to medically-accurate information about topics such as body image, sexual development, gender stereotypes, and romantic relationships.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Active Control Resource