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NCT Number: NCT07083661

Mindfulness-based Intervention and Young Children's Screen Time

This research proposal aims to explore the effectiveness of the mindfulness-based intervention (MBI) on reducing young children's screen time (ST) and caring parents' psychological and social issues in Hong Kong.

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Key information

Conditions

Screen Time Exposure

Age range

2 year and older

Sex eligibility

All sexes

Study type

Interventional

Phase

Not applicable

Primary location

Hong Kong Metropolitan University

Hong Kong

Location status: Recruiting

Location contact

Yuen Ling LEUNG

CONTACT

(852)39708751

About this study

The research design was a two-arm waitlist, randomised controlled study with a focus group interview with 60 participants. The intervention integrates the mindfulness-based component into a modified Hands-on Parent Empowerment-20 (HOPE-20) programme, and is named as MORE (i.e. Mindfulness-based intervention On parent empowerment in REducing children's screen time). The intervention consists of 6 weeks of MBI training, each lasting for 2 hours, led by an experienced certified mindfulness teacher. The intervention programme consists of three components: (1) skill part - 4 lessons talk about parenting skills (Praising, token system, response cost, planned ignorance, quiet zone); (2) skill part - 2 lessons talk about child-parent communication (building relationship, communication strategies); and (3) mindfulness part - mindfulness-based training. The primary outcomes are young children's ST and children's disruptive behaviour. Feasibility outcomes include recruitment rate, retention rate, and acceptability of the interventions. Secondary outcomes include parent-child relationships, parents' perceptions of their abilities to manage the demands of parenting, parental stress level, and social support adequacy. The proposal also includes plans for focus group interviews with participants to gather qualitative data. Analyses will include descriptive statistics, Pearson's chi-square test, Pearson's product-moment correlations, One-way ANOVA. A p-value < 0.05 will be taken as the level of statistical significant. The 95% Confidence interval (CI) around the differences will be calculated. For qualitative data, the results will be analyzed descriptively and narratively. The proposal highlights the potential of MBI for reducing young children's ST, as well as improving children-parent relationships, enhancing the efficacy and satisfaction level of the parents, and reducing the stress level of the parents.

Who can participate

Healthy volunteers accepted: Yes

Only the study team can determine whether someone qualifies for participation.

Inclusion criteria

  • parent-child dyads resident in Hong Kong;
  • child being between 2 and 6- year; and
  • child with normal intellectual ability.

Exclusion criteria

  • children with major developmental problems, history of domestic violence, drug abuse, or mental illness in the family;
  • being unable to communicate and understand Cantonese as the intervention will be conducted in Cantonese; and
  • parent-child dyads previous participation in mindfulness-based training for less than 6 months.

Treatment and study plan

Mindfulness-based intervention on parent empowerment in reducing children's screen time (MORE)

Behavioral

Participants will receive a 6-week MORE group training by integration of mindfulness-based component into a modified Hands-on Parent Empowerment-20 (HOPE-20) programme.

Primary outcomes

  1. Screen time exposure - frequency

    Time frame: Baseline, week 6, week 18

    Children's screen time exposure including frequency will be record in terms of times per week

  2. Screen time exposure - duration

    Time frame: Baseline, week 6, week 18

    Duration will be record in terms of minutes

  3. Screen time exposure - nature and content

    Time frame: Baseline, week 6, week 18

    Screen time exposure, nature, and content require the parent to provide the types and names of the shows watched by their young children.

  4. Screen time exposure - viewing behavior

    Time frame: Baseline, week 6, week 18

    The parents are required to provide the information on young children's viewing behavior, including singing, role play, discussing issues or discussing the films and shows by selecting from the questionnaire.

  5. Change in parental stress level

    Time frame: Baseline, week 6, week 18

    The Parenting Stress Index - short form. It is a 36-item 5-point Likert scale with three 12-item subscales. Each item is scored from 1 to 5 (1 = "strongly disagree", 5 = "strongly agree"). The lowest score is 36, and the highest score is 180. Higher scores indicated higher parenting stress, and the cutoff point is >90.

  6. Change in social support adquency level

    Time frame: Baseline, week 6, week 18

    The Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support Questionnaire is a 12-item questionnaire. Each item is scored from 1 to 7 (1 = "strongly disagree", 7 = "strongly agree"), the lowest score is 12 and the highest score is 84. A higher score defines higher social support from family, friends and significant others.

Secondary outcomes

  1. Change in children disruptive behavior

    Time frame: Baseline, week 6, week 18

    The Eyberg Child Behaviour Inventory is a 36-item questionnaire that consists of two subscales: the intensity scale and the problem scale. The intensity scale assesses the common child behavior problems frequency from 1 to 7 (1 = "never", 7 = "always"), and the problem scale assesses the extent to which the parents find the troublesome behavior in "yes" or "no". The lowest score is 36, and the highest score is 252. Higher scores indicate more child behavior problems.

  2. Change in parent-child relationships

    Time frame: Baseline, week 6, week 18

    The Parenting Sense of Competence Scale is a 6-point Likert scale with 15-item. Each item is scored from 1 to 6 (1 = "strongly disagree", 6 = "strongly agree"), the lowest score is 15, and the highest score is 90. A higher score represents a better parent-child relationship

Other outcomes

  1. Feasibility of the study - recruitment and retention rate

    Time frame: week 6, week 18

    Recruitment and retention rates will be recorded as a percentage.

  2. Feasibility of the study - attendance rates

    Time frame: week 6, week 18

    Attendance rates are defined as the number of training sessions a subject has attended.

  3. Feasibility of the study - time required to recruit to target sample size

    Time frame: week 6, week 18

    The time required to recruit to target sample size will be record in terms of week

  4. Feasibility of the study - adverse events

    Time frame: week 6, week 18

    Adverse events will be recorded in terms of narrative style.

  5. Acceptability of the study

    Time frame: week 6, week 18

    Perception and satisfaction level of the intervention programme will be assessed by questionnaire

  6. Comments and suggestions on intervention programme

    Time frame: week 6, week 18

    A total of 10 parent-child dyads will be invited to an hour focus group interview after the completion of the MORE programme to gather the experiences of participants.

    A semi-structured interview question will be used for focus group discussions and individual interviews, and an audio recorder will be used to record the dialogue of the focus group interview. The audiotaped interviews will be transcribed verbatim by a trained RA.

Study contacts

Contact information is provided by the study sponsor or research team.

Sze Him, Isaac Leung, PhD in Statistics

CONTACT

[email protected]

3943 9423

Yuen Ling Leung, Doctor of Nursing

CONTACT

[email protected]

39708751

Sponsors and collaborators

Lead sponsor

Hong Kong Metropolitan University

Other

Registry information

Official study title

Mindfulness-based Intervention on Parent Empowerment in Reducing Young Children's Screen Time (MORE): a Mixed Method Study

Important dates

Study start
2025
Primary completion
2026
Study completion
2026
First posted
Jul 24, 2025
Registry last updated
Jul 8, 2026

OpenTrials presents study information sourced from ClinicalTrials.gov. The official registry record should be consulted for the latest information.

View the official ClinicalTrials.gov record (opens in a new tab)

This listing is for discovery and informational purposes only. It is not medical advice, does not guarantee that a study is recruiting, and does not determine eligibility. Contact the study team and a qualified healthcare professional when considering participation.

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