Make Room for Play: An Evaluation of a Campaign Promoting Active Play

Abstract

In the context of rising screen time, only a third of Canadian children are achieving adequate amounts of active play, an important source of physical activity. ParticipACTION, a national not-forprofit organization, created the "Make Room for Play" campaign targeting parents with television advertisements depicting how screen time takes away from active play. The advertisements featured children engaging in active play (e.g., jump rope) while a black screen progressively sequesters the room for them to play. This study's purpose was to evaluate the campaign using the hierarchy of effects model, a framework for conceptualizing the impact of mass media campaigns. It was hypothesized that recall would relate to intermediate (e.g., cognitions, self-efficacy) and distal (e.g., parental support) factors. Twenty-six percent of the general population and caregiver samples surveyed (N=1576) recalled (unaided) the advertisement and 45.9% recalled when prompted. Parental support was significantly higher in those recalling the campaign, p=.009. Twenty-four percent of parents reporting unaided recall (versus 14.0% of those not) tried to engage in active play with their children and 21.2% (versus 12.0%) tried to create opportunities for children to engage in play. Strengths and limitations of mass media approaches targeting active play and screen time are discussed.

Parent Self-Efficacy and Its Relationship with Children’s Screen Viewing: A Scoping Review

“…Thirteen out of sixteen studies found that parent self-efficacy is inversely associated with child/adolescent screen time, indicating that higher levels of parental self-efficacy to limit screen time are linked with reduced screen time for children. The remaining studies reported no association or limited results; two studies [66,70] reported no relationship between parent self-efficacy and child screen time. Specifically, Priebe et al [66] did not report an association as their evaluation primarily focused on the recall of a campaign promoting active play and its impact on parental support for screen time and play, rather than directly examining the link between parental self-efficacy and children's screen time.…”

“…Articles report significant variations in the number of participants, with one study participation sample as low as 106 parents [54], whilst another was as high as 4006 parents [68]. Distinct study groups were identified with participants either parents in isolation [21,22,43,44,54,58,62,64,66,68] or parents participating in a parent-child dyad [49,51,59,67]. Some studies looked at mothers individually [42] or in mother-child dyads [70].…”

“…The age of the children in the studies ranged from 1 month to 18 years of age; however, most studies focused on the early years of ≤6 years of age. Three of the sixteen studies included children or adolescents aged over six years of age [44,66,68].…”

“…There was considerable variation in the number of survey questions used to measure self-efficacy. Some studies included one parent self-efficacy survey question relating to how they managed their child's behaviours and emotions in relation to the focus area of study, for example, asking a question on how parental self-efficacy influenced their child's physical activity [43,66,67]. Another study used a 14-item parental self-efficacy scale to indicate how confident they were in managing their child's screen time broadly [54].…”

“…The largest number of articles focused on the relationship between parent factors such as selfefficacy and their role in screen time alone as the primary focus. Other studies looked at the relationship between parent self-efficacy and screen time as part of a broader evaluation of health outcomes such as physical activity [44,59], child nutrition and diet [42], obesity [51], and health campaigns [64,66].…”