Preregistration – Parental concern about children’s (0-18 age) screen usage: psychological and social predictors

This cross-sectional study aims to investigate parents’ concerns about their child’s (age 0-18) screen usage, and in this intends to identify psychological and social predictors in relations to this. We examine this both as a general phenomenon in parents, and as a comparison across the age groups 0-5 years, 6-11 years and 12-17 years.
Data is collected from a projected 850 parents to children 0-18 years, who were recruited through a national survey service (Epinion) evenly distributed in the three age groups. However, the final sample ended at N=634 due to limits in the survey bureau’s database.
As predictors for parental concern about screen usage we investigate parents’ educational level, tendency to maximizing (or optimizing) and belief in popular neuromyths.
As an additional predictor, we examine parents’ perception of play, and the extent to which parents value different forms of play in their child’s life. We predict that parents who consider play valuable will show higher levels of concern about screen usage.
Finally, based on previous studies in the field, we look at parents’ educational level as a mediator for maximizing, belief in neuromyths and concern about their child’s screen usage.
Parental concern is self-reported at face value through direct questions related to screen time in general, and to specific screen media.
Further, a factor analysis will be conducted in order to identify specific stratas of concern. Based on a content analysis of the discourse surrounding screen time in national media in 2017-2018, parents are asked to rate their concern about 33 commonly voiced beliefs about outcomes of screen usage which will then be subjected to principal component analysis.
The data collection therefore has two strains to be reported as separate studies: One about predictors for general parental concern about children’s screen usage and one mapping potential clusters of concerns about the concrete outcomes of screen usage.

本研究为一项横断面调查，旨在探究家长（针对0至18岁儿童）对子女屏幕使用的担忧，并意图识别与这一现象相关的心理和社会预测因素。研究不仅将此视为家长普遍现象的探讨，而且作为0至5岁、6至11岁和12至17岁年龄组间的比较研究。数据来自预计850名家长，这些家长通过国家调查服务（Epinion）招募，并在三个年龄组中均匀分布。然而，由于调查机构数据库的限制，最终样本量缩减至N=634。在家长对屏幕使用担忧的预测因素方面，我们研究了家长的教育水平、最大化（或优化）倾向以及对流行神经学谬误的信仰。作为额外的预测因素，我们考察了家长对玩耍的认知，以及家长对其子女生活中不同形式玩耍价值的评价。我们预测，认为玩耍有价值的家长将表现出更高的对屏幕使用的担忧水平。最后，基于该领域的先前研究，我们将家长的教育水平视为最大化、相信神经学谬误以及对子女屏幕使用担忧的中介因素。家长对屏幕使用的担忧通过直接与一般屏幕时间和特定屏幕媒体相关的直接问题进行自我报告。此外，将进行因子分析，以识别担忧的具体层次。基于对2017-2018年国家媒体中关于屏幕时间话语的内容分析，家长被要求对33种关于屏幕使用结果的普遍观点的担忧进行评级，然后对这些评级进行主成分分析。因此，数据收集有两个独立的报告方向，一项关于预测家长对子女屏幕使用一般担忧的因素，另一项是映射对屏幕使用具体结果担忧的潜在聚类。