The Effect of Primary Care Interventions on Children's Media Viewing Habits and Exposure to Violence

Vanderbilt University

Status: Completed

Conditions: Violence

Treatments: Behavioral: Play Nicely Program; Other: Control Group; Behavioral: AAP Handout entitled, Pulling the Plug on Violence.

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT01490320

IRB# 100401

Details and patient eligibility

About

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that parents receive anticipatory guidance about violence prevention as part of the routine well child visit. Educational resources are needed to help physicians routinely provide these important anticipatory guidance messages. In this study, consecutive parents will be exposed to routine anticipatory guidance messages before the well child visit with the physician. After the clinic visit, parents will be invited to participate in a research study to determine if they plan any changes at home. The key research question of this study is:

Can a brief multimedia program (i.e. Play Nicely program) and/or the AAP Connected Kids brochure, entitled, "Pulling the Plug on TV Violence", help parents develop plans to decreases their children's exposure to violence in the media (e.g. less media time, no TV in the bedroom)?

Enrollment: 336 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18 to 70 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Participants included English and Spanish speaking caregivers of 2-12 year old children presenting to the pediatric primary care clinic for a well-child visit.

Exclusion criteria

• Parents who could not speak either English or Spanish.

Trial design

Primary purpose: Prevention

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Single Blind

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336 participants in 3 patient groups, including a placebo group

Control

Placebo Comparator group

Description:

Parents in control group experienced a routine primary care visit.

Treatment:

Other: Control Group

Handout intervention

Experimental group

Description:

Caregivers assigned to the hand-out group were instructed to read the AAP hand-out "Pulling the Plug On TV Violence." This 2 page hand-out emphasizes the negative effect that television has on children's behavior and makes recommendations about limiting media. The RA did not supervise the reading of the handout.

Treatment:

Behavioral: AAP Handout entitled, Pulling the Plug on Violence.

Multimedia intervention

Experimental group

Description:

Caregivers assigned to the multimedia group were instructed to watch "Recommendation 3: Decrease Exposure to Violence" from the Play Nicely program, a 5 minute video in English and Spanish that teaches caregivers about the negative impact of violent media and instructs parents about the importance of limiting media. The intervention was presented to the parents on a mobile laptop computer.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Play Nicely Program