Development and Validation of an Automated Measurement of Child Screen Media Use: FLASH

NCT03382951 | Completed

• 2 other identifiers: H-40556R01DK113269
• Study Type: observational
• Target: 321
• Locations: 1 country
• Sites: 1

Brief Summary

Children's screen media use has been identified as a prominent cause for sedentary time that has been linked to obesity and metabolic syndrome, as well as other unwanted physiologic, psychosocial, and academic outcomes in children. However, no system that is automatic, accurate and unobtrusive has been developed to assess children's screen use on different platforms. Advances in technology, such as person detection, accurate facial recognition based on images, and imaging, computer vision and signal processing algorithms now offer novel and promising solutions to objectively and automatically measure people's screen viewing behaviors. Investigators will leverage these recent advances and integrate them to develop a first of its kind, in-home, unobtrusive, automatic, privacy preserving screen use monitoring system: Family Level Assessment of Screen use in the Home (FLASH) that uses an embedded computing platform connected to a video camera on larger, stationary screens (FLASH-TV); or functions as a background app using a front facing camera (FLASH-Mobile). The trans-disciplinary group, consisting of behavioral researchers at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) and electrical engineers at Rice University, will develop and asses the validity of the FLASH to accurately identify whether and for how long a child is using screen media devices. In this multiple-PI study, the development of FLASH is led by engineers at Rice. Once a final system has been developed, alpha and beta tested, a validation study will take place in observation labs by the BCM behavioral researchers with 6-11 year old children for FLASH-TV and FLASH-Mobile (n=43). Comparisons of FLASH output will be made to staff observations of children participating in a set of structured predefined activities. Next FLASH will be assessed for feasibility and accuracy for identifying children's screen use across platforms in a naturalistic home setting (n=46), compared to direct observation and screen use diaries. FLASH has the potential of having a significant impact on public health and clinical research regarding screen media use by improving scientist's ability to assess the children's screen use. This can lead to better methodology to understand the impact of screen use on children's health outcomes or intervention effects of screen media reduction programs.

Conditions

Sedentary Lifestyle

Outcome Measures

Primary Outcomes (1)

• Screen media use/viewing

  Assessment of participant's screen media use as detected by the FLASH system. This will be assessed once per family triad during a task based protocol in the observational labs at the research center compared to staff coding of video/audio recordings of the same time period.

  once, upon enrollment

Secondary Outcomes (4)

• The feasibility to recruit families to test the of the FLASH devices their home

  9 months

• The feasibility of the FLASH devices to be used in the family's home

  9 months

• The feasibility of the FLASH devices in children's homes to measure the amount of time a child spends viewing TV or other screens

  three days

• The feasibility of the FLASH devices in children's homes for future studies

  three days

Study Arms (1)

Healthy children

Each study is an observational study with no group assignments and no control/placebo.

Eligibility Criteria

• Age: 5 Years - 65 Years
• Sex: all
• Age Groups: Child (0-17), Adult (18-64), Older Adult (65+)
• Sampling Method: Non-Probability Sample

Study Population

Healthy children living in the greater metropolitan area around the research center

You may qualify if:

• index child 5-11 year old child along with parent (adult 18-65)
• and for some studies a 6-14 years old sibling
• family is fluent in English
• parent willing to allow their children to watch age-appropriate TV or movies and play age-appropriate digital/video games.

You may not qualify if:

• Parent or child with a developmental, medical, mental or physical diagnosis (such as Down's syndrome, Autism, psychosis, wheel-chair reliant) that would prevent him/her from following the protocol.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Baylor College of Medicine: lead
• National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK): collaborator
• William Marsh Rice University: collaborator
• Seattle Children's Hospital: collaborator

Study Sites (1)

Baylor College of Medicine

Houston, Texas, 77030, United States

Location

MeSH Terms

Conditions

Sedentary Behavior

Condition Hierarchy (Ancestors)

Behavior

Study Officials

• Teresia O'Connor, MD, MPH

  Baylor College of Medicine

  PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

Study Design

• Study Type: observational
• Observational Model: OTHER
• Time Perspective: CROSS SECTIONAL
• Sponsor Type: OTHER
• Responsible Party: PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
• PI Title: Associate Professor of Pediatrics

Study Record Dates

• First Submitted: November 29, 2017
• First Posted: December 26, 2017
• Study Start: October 19, 2017
• Primary Completion: November 27, 2023
• Study Completion: November 27, 2023
• Last Updated: March 20, 2024

Record last verified: 2024-03

Data Sharing

• IPD Sharing: Will not share

Locations

US (1)