NCT06071832

Using Structured Video Chat to Improve Relationships Between Young Children and Remote Grandparents

Active, enrolled NA Last updated 5 March 2025

What this trial tests

NA trial testing Instructions for family Zoom session in Child Development in 540 participants. Participants enrolled and being followed up; not accepting new ones.

Timeline

1 November 2022

Primary endpoint
1 September 2025

1 September 2025

Quick facts

Lead sponsor	Lafayette College
Phase	NA
Status	Active, enrolled
Study type	INTERVENTIONAL
Allocation	non randomized
Design	factorial
Masking	none
Primary purpose	supportive care
Enrollment	540
Start date	1 November 2022
Primary completion	1 September 2025
Estimated completion	1 September 2025
Sites	1 location across United States

Drugs / interventions tested

• Instructions for family Zoom session

Conditions studied

• Child Development — all drugs for Child Development →
• Family Members — all drugs for Family Members →
• Grandparents — all drugs for Grandparents →

Sponsor

Lafayette College

Who can join

Adults 18 Months to 5, any sex, with Child Development or Family Members. Patients with the condition only — healthy volunteers not accepted.

Sponsor's own description

During the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic many families are using video chat (e.g., Zoom) to maintain relationships with distant relatives, including grandparents. While 67% of all grandparents reported liking the idea of video chatting with their grandchildren, only 28% did so regularly. Increasing this percentage could significantly improve grandparent-grandchild relationships because the Preliminary Study 1 showed that video chat frequency is a strong predictor of grandparent's ratings of closeness to their grandchild, even after controlling for the geographic distance between them. The overall goal of the past, ongoing, and future research is to understand the cognitive and social developmental challenges of video chat in order to support its use with children. As the next step towards this goal, the investigators propose to directly compare two approaches to instructing grandparents on how to improve video chats between grandparents and young grandchildren (18-72 months of age). Families will use video chat without the involvement of researchers during each video chat. Parent-child- grandparent triads (n=180; the largest multi-session observational study of young children and video chat to date) will record 10 video chats under one of three randomly-assigned conditions: structured play, structured reading, or when given no instructions (control). The overall hypothesis is that structured video chat will increase children's engagement and joint attention (primary outcome measures), as well as grandparents' enjoyment of video chat and closeness with their grandchild (secondary outcome measures). The investigators will use detailed behavioral coding of the video recordings of these chats to objectively assess many of the outcome measures. The Preliminary Study 2 showed that structured video chat facilitates more positive social interactions. The proposed work extends the preliminary work because it translates laboratory methods to a complementary ecologically-valid approach in families' naturalistic environments. In Aim 1, the investigators will determine whether and for whom structured video chat improves child engagement and increases child-initiated screen- based joint attention during video chats between grandparents and grandchildren. In Aim 2, the investigators will determine whether structured video chat increases grandparents' enjoyment of the video chats and leads to greater feelings of closeness to their grandchild. Both principal investigators, who are at R15-eligible institutions, are well-qualified to complete the proposed work. Since 2017, they have published 9 papers on video chat, 12 papers on reading, and collaboratively completed 3 preliminary studies and 2 papers. They have mentored 77 undergraduate students, many of whom were co-authors on conference posters or presentations (37 students in total; 22 as a presenter) or journal articles. Importantly, 17 students came from underrepresented groups (BIPOC, first- generation in college, LGBT). A total of 47 are pursuing or have completed graduate work in health-related sciences, including 15 for doctoral degrees. The proposed work addresses a National Institute for Child Health \& Development, Child Development and Behavior Branch's (CDBB) priority of advancing understanding of "Effects of Technology and Digital Media Use on Child and Adolescent Development."

Publications & conference data

No peer-reviewed publications indexed yet for this trial.