An interventional study of BBC Education Tiny Happy People videos and Physical health control intervention in Language Development, sponsored by University of Sheffield. Status unknown at 1 site in United Kingdom. Open to participants aged 4 Months to 9 Months, including healthy volunteers. Per ClinicalTrials.gov, last updated 2022-04-20.
Sponsored by University of Sheffield · Not applicable, Interventional, and Basic science
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.
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).
University of Sheffield is the lead sponsor of 74 studies on the registry; 16 are open to participants now.
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Families must:
Infants must:
Exclusion Criteria:
Neither caregivers nor infants must have any significant known physical, mental or learning disability
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.
Behavioral: BBC Education Tiny Happy People videos
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
Behavioral: Physical health control intervention
This intervention involves regular texting of BBC Education Tiny Happy People videos to parents
This intervention involves regular texting of publicly available videos about supporting infant physical and dental health to parents
18 month expressive vocabulary
Infant expressive vocabulary, assessed using the communicative development inventory (CDI) at 18 months
Time frame: 2 months. Parents will complete the report within 2 months of the infant turning 18 months old.
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.
Time frame: Measures will be collected within 2 months of the child turning 12, 18 and 24 months
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.
Time frame: Measures will be collected within 2 months of the child turning 12, 18 and 24 months
24 month expressive vocabulary
Infant expressive vocabulary, assessed using the communicative development inventory (CDI) at 24 months
Time frame: 3 months. Parents will complete the report within 3 months of the infant turning 24 months old.
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.
Time frame: Clicking on a video link within one month of it being sent
Plan to share: Yes — Anonymised Individual Participant Data will be archived using the Open Science Framework's repository. For those participants who give permission, video data will also be archived such that researchers who have signed a confidentiality agreement can access this data.
Supporting information: Study protocol, Sap, Icf, Csr, Analytic code
This study is status unknown, as verified in Apr 2022. You cannot join it, but the record below documents what was studied.
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University of Sheffield