Digital Assessment Core

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Previous studies of children’s TDM use and sleep have frequently relied on parent-report of these behaviors. Parent reporting of children’s TDM use is either very brief and inaccurate (reporting typical use with about 3 questions) or very labor intensive, requiring parents to actively report on their child’s TDM use every 15

minutes during the day (TDM diaries). Both can lead to gross under and over-reporting of children’s TV viewing or mobile device use. Leveraging advances in digital sensors which permit the objective and passive (i.e., requiring little to no effort by the parent or child) assessment of TDM use and sleep/activity behaviors, the DA-

Core will support the overall program by ensuring high-quality assessment of children’s TDM and sleep across Projects 1, 2, and 3. Specifically, Project 1 will use FLASH-TV, and applications that track mobile device use and wrist worn accelerometer to examine the association of the amount, timing, and type of children’s TDM

use on children’s sleep. Using the same cohort and TDM use assessment as Project 1, Project 2 will examine the impact of TDM use on children’s executive functioning and weight status, and examine the moderating role parents can play. Project 3 systematically examines the impact of the timing of children’s mobile device use in

the home environment before bed on their circadian timing, sleep (as measured by wearable devices in the home), and executive functioning. The DA-Core will support the overall program by ensuring high-quality objective and passive (i.e., requiring little to no effort by the parent or child) assessment of children’s TDM and

sleep across Projects 1, 2, and 3. The DA-Core will establish a sustainable, multi-disciplinary core to service the current proposal and future research in the use of digital sensors and wearable devices. Aims and objectives of the core will include management and maintenance of an inventory of devices (i.e., FLASH-TV

and actigraphs), training staff in assessment procedures, processing of data, conducting quality control procedures to ensure the quality of the data, integration of data across our various platforms to allow for hour- to-hour examination of the interaction of TDM use and rest/activity patterns, and storage and maintenance of

the raw, processed, and extracted data on a secure data server that is accessible by all of the cores, projects, and team members across institutions. The over-arching goal of this application is to launch a sustainable multi-disciplinary research program to robustly investigate the short- and long-term influence of TDM use on a

diverse sample of preschool aged children’s sleep, circadian rhythms, EF, and weight status. The projects and cores established with this research program will permit the research team to address the specific aims of each project, in addition to position us to seek additional funding to continue to follow this cohort of preschoolers

over a longer duration. Future objective assessment of TDM use among these children as they start elementary school and then move into middle school would greatly enhance our understanding of the impact of TDM use, whether good or bad, on children’s health and development.