Exploring the Role of Parental Emotion Regulation and Outcomes of Parental Emotional Coaching on Child and Adolescent Psychosocial Outcomes

NCT ID: NCT06588985

Last Updated: 2024-09-19

Basic Information

• Recruitment Status: RECRUITING
• Clinical Phase: NA
• Total Enrollment: 200 participants
• Study Classification: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Start Date: 2024-05-24
• Study Completion Date: 2026-05-24

Brief Summary

Emotional regulation has been found to play a crucial role in an individual's mental well-being and emotional dysregulation is implicated in most of psychiatric disorders listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) (APA, 2013; Gross & Levenson, 1997; Thoits, 1985). Specifically in children, poor emotional regulation skills and parental emotional dysregulation contribute significantly to childhood psychopathology (Han & Shaffer, 2014). This study has two parts - Part 1 aims to explore and identify the parental emotion socialization factors that contributes to a child's emotion regulation abilities and examine how parental emotion dysregulation contribute to the profile of a child's emotional and behavioral difficulties; Part 2 attempts to determine the effectiveness of parental emotional coaching in developing a child's emotion regulation abilities and reducing a child's symptoms of psychopathology. Participants will include both nonclinical and clinical samples, consisting of children and adolescents, aged 7 to 17 years old (middle childhood to adolescence) and their parents. Participants will be invited to complete a set of questionnaires (Part 1) and to participate in a randomized controlled trial that provides parents with a workshop on emotion coaching skills (Part 2). Data will be analysed using correlation,regression analyses and mixed Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). Clinical implications from this study includes, informing of improvements to the clinical services provided in the healthcare setting, as well as contribute to the transdiagnostic formulation of children and adolescent mental health conditions.

Detailed Description

Proposed Methodology This research proposes 2 studies to investigate the above stated questions. Study 1 will utilize a cross-sectional design with children and adolescents, as well as their parents (from general population), completing questionnaires provided, while Study 2 will involve inviting participants from Study 1 to participate in a randomized controlled trial. Participants may choose to only participate in Study 1 and not Study 2. If participants are keen and provide consent to participate in Study 2, they will have to complete both interventions and all questionnaires required at all timepoints.

Participants & Procedure Participants include children and adolescents aged 7 to 17 years old, and one of their parents. Participants will be recruited from the community and the Student Health Centre at Health Promotion Board (HPB). HPB is only used as a referral site and recruitment site. Research procedures are not conducted on their premise. Both parents and children will be required to be fluent in the English language, and all parent-child dyads will be invited to participate.

In terms of procedure, interested participants (parent-child dyads) will be invited to participate. Consent will be collected from the child and their parents. For Study 1, after consent is taken, participants will be asked to complete a set of questionnaires and indicate their interest to participate in Study 2. Survey questionnaires will be administered either face-to-face or online - for face-to-face administration, the researcher will provide parent-child dyad with a tablet to complete the questionnaires; for online administration, parent-child dyads will be emailed a link to the questionnaires to complete (most likely on Qualtrics). All participants are advised to complete all questions and do not skip. A copy of the questionnaire will be shown in its entirety to participants before providing consent. For children, if they have difficulty understanding the questions, they are allowed to skip it or seek help from their parents/researcher. The parents' questionnaire should take at most 30 minutes to complete, while the child's questionnaire will take at most 15 minutes to complete.

If participants only participate in Study 1, they will only be required to complete the set of questionnaires at Timepoint 1. Participants in Study 1 will not be debriefed, but they can request to be debriefed by contacting the research team and we can arrange a debrief via Zoom.

In Study 2, a randomized controlled trial is designed to test the effects of parent emotion coaching on parental factors (such as ER skills, sense of competency, and mood and stress levels), child factors (such as ER skills, internalizing and externalizing problems, and treatment outcomes), as well as parent-child relationship. Participants will be a subset of Study 1's participants.

If participants indicate interest to participate in Study 2, the parents will be randomly assigned to the following experimental groups: 1. Emotion Coaching Training, or 2. Waitlist Control condition. Parents in the emotion coaching workshop will be invited to attend an online training on emotion coaching strategies, while parents in the control condition will not be receiving any training workshops during the study. They will be invited to join the online workshops when the study is completed. Participants will not be informed of the group that they are assigned to, and a debrief session will be provided once they complete the study. \

The training module consists of a three-hour workshop, followed by 2 bi-weekly 30-minute phone/online consultations (participants can choose from preferred timeslot on weekdays during regular work hours).

Parents and children will be required to complete the set of outcome measures at pre-, post-treatment and at a 1-month follow-up. All procedures are conducted in English only.

Estimated timeline for the different groups:

Treatment Group - Week 0: Questionnaire (parent and child), Weeks 1 - 5: Parent Workshop, 2 phone consults, Week 6: post-questionnaire (parent and child), Week 9 - 10: follow-up questionnaire (parent and child). Intervention phase itself will last at most 5 weeks. The 3-hour online workshop will be conducted in real-time over Zoom, by a clinical psychologist or a Masters in Clinical Psychologist student (supervised by a clinical psychologist).

Waitlist Group - Week 0: Questionnaire (parent and child), Week 6: Questionnaire T2 (parent and child), Week 9-10: Questionnaire T3 (parent and child). After they have completed all 3 sets of questionnaires, they will be invited to sign up for the workshop on dates that are convenient for them. The 3-hour online workshop will be conducted in real-time over Zoom, by a clinical psychologist or a Masters in Clinical Psychologist student (supervised by a clinical psychologist).

At the end of Study 2, all participants will be provided with the debrief sheet (either hard or soft copy can be provided) and offered a debrief session over Zoom. The debrief session will be conducted by the research team.

In cases whereby participants may wish to have longer consultation sessions, or to extend the intervention outside of the research, they may be referred to the relevant professionals/services.

Participants have until 1 week after they completed the study to decide if they wish to withdraw their research data.

Conditions

Emotion Regulation

Study Design

• Allocation Method: RANDOMIZED
• Intervention Model: PARALLEL
• Primary Study Purpose: SUPPORTIVE_CARE
• Blinding Strategy: SINGLE

Study Groups

Emotion Coaching Treatment Group

Parents of the parent-child dyad in this group, will attend 1 3-hour parent workshop on emotion coaching. Followed by 2 biweekly phone consultations with a clinical psychologist.

Group Type: EXPERIMENTAL

Emotion Coaching Parent Training Workshop

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

Parents will attend a 3-hour online workshop that introduces the fundamentals of emotion coaching and the phone consultations will be used to help parents troubleshoot and brainstorm application of the workshop content.

Waitlist Control Group

In this group, questionnaires/data will be collected, but no treatment will be given. Only after they have submitted all data, then they will be invited to participate in the above Emotion Coaching parent workshop and phone consultations.

Group Type: ACTIVE_COMPARATOR

Waitlist Control

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

Parents will only receive the parent workshop and phone consultations after they have completed all the required questionnaires.

Interventions

Emotion Coaching Parent Training Workshop

Parents will attend a 3-hour online workshop that introduces the fundamentals of emotion coaching and the phone consultations will be used to help parents troubleshoot and brainstorm application of the workshop content.

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

Waitlist Control

Parents will only receive the parent workshop and phone consultations after they have completed all the required questionnaires.

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

Eligibility Criteria

Inclusion Criteria

• Participants include children and adolescents aged 7 to 17 years old, and one of their parents.
• All parent-child dyads will be invited to participate.
• Parents and children have to be fluent in English.
• Persons who are not parents will not be recruited.

Exclusion Criteria

• Children or parents with physical impairments (apart from corrected vision) will be excluded.
• Children or parents reporting psychotic symptoms, neurodevelopmental disorders, or severe mood disorders will be excluded.

• Minimum Eligible Age: 7 Years
• Maximum Eligible Age: 17 Years
• Eligible Sex: ALL
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes

Sponsors

Ministry of Education, Singapore

OTHER_GOV

Sponsor Role: collaborator

National University of Singapore

OTHER

Sponsor Role: lead

Responsible Party

Ong Jiehan Jamie

Instructor

Responsibility Role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR

Principal Investigators

Jamie Ong

Role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR

National University of Singapore

Locations

National University of Singapore

Singapore, , Singapore

Site Status: RECRUITING

Countries

Singapore

Central Contacts

Jamie Ong

Role: CONTACT

psyoj@nus.edu.sg

65161143

Ryan Hong

Role: CONTACT

ryan.hong@nus.edu.sg

65166120

Facility Contacts

Jamie Ong

Role: primary

psyoj@nus.edu.sg

65161143

Min Geng

Role: backup

mingeng@u.nus.edu

Provided Documents

Document Type: Study Protocol

View Document

Document Type: Informed Consent Form

View Document

Other Identifiers

NUS-IRB-2023-859

Identifier Type: -

Identifier Source: org_study_id