The effects of a mother-daughter physical activity intervention on child screen time and sedentary behavior

Recent data show that more than half (54%) of children aged 2-5 years do not meet American Academy of Pediatrics screen time guidelines, specifically young girls. Further, increased screen time has been associated with increased child sedentary behavior and negative health outcomes such as obesity. Parental self-efficacy to limit screen time is negatively associated with the amount of time their children spend in screen activities but the literature to support this relationship is limited. Therefore, it is important design interventions to decrease child screen time. Purpose: The overall goal of this study was to examine the effectiveness of a mother-daughter screen time intervention. The specific aims were: a) examine changes in child screen time and sedentary behavior, b) examine changes in maternal knowledge of screen time guidelines and self-efficacy to limit screen time, and c) examine relationships between screen time and sedentary behavior and maternal knowledge of screen time guidelines and self-efficacy from pre- to post-intervention. Methods: Thirty-three mother-daughter dyads were recruited to participate in an 11-week intervention study. Mothers completed a demographic questionnaire, Media Child Use questionnaire, Knowledge of Screen time guidelines questionnaire, and self-efficacy to limit screen time questionnaire before and after the intervention. Daughters wore an accelerometer for 7 days to measure sedentary behavior. Twelve mother-daughter pairs received a physical activity only intervention, 12 mother-daughter pairs received physical activity plus screen time intervention, and 10 mother-daughters pairs sewed as participants. Mother-daughter intervention pairs met weekly for 1-hour in community parks and were given information related to physical activity and/or screen time, various games and new physical activity toys, and new challenges for physical activity and/or screen time in the upcoming week depending on their group assignment. Repeated measures 3 (group) x2 (time) ANOVA were used to examine changes in child’s screen time and sedentary behavior and maternal knowledge of screen time guidelines and self-efficacy to limit screen time. A Pearson product moment correlation was used to examine associations between maternal self-efficacy and child screen time and sedentary behavior. Results: Mothers in this study had an average age of 35.53 (4.42) years and daughters were aged 3.87 (1.05) years. Mother’s average BMI was 27.88 (6.75) kg/m2, 87.5% had a college degree or higher and 78.13% reported $50,000 or higher household income. There was a statistically significant group x time interaction for frequency of screen time activities (F(2,26)= 7.32, p= 0.003, d= -0.96. There were non-statistically significant interactions for all other variables. Finally, there was a moderate-to-strong negative correlation (r= -0.43) between maternal self-efficacy to limit screen time and children’s screen time at pre-intervention (r= -0.38, p < 0.05) and post-intervention (r= -0.51, p < 0.004). Conclusions: The physical activity plus screen time intervention successfully reduced child screen time. Along physical activity and screen time participants, maternal knowledge and self-efficacy to limit screen time increased despite non-statistically significant differences between groups. However, all changes in the physical activity plus screen time group were in the expected direction and stronger in magnitude than the physical activity only and control group. The hypotheses were partially supported due to lack of statistically significant differences between groups for sedentary behavior, maternal knowledge, and self-efficacy to limit screen time. This intervention showed promising results for decreasing child screen time and sedentary and maternal knowledge of screen time guidelines and self-efficacy to limit screen time. Future studies should examine this intervention with larger, completely randomized samples of participants