Clinical Study attributes
This study seeks to examine a novel interpersonal target; namely, parent-teen conversations about youth health behavior change. The rationale is that parents have profound impacts on teen risk and vulnerability. Yet parents receive minimal training in the elements of conversations that optimally inspire their children toward engaging in healthy behaviors. A theoretically grounded and reliable taxonomy of behavior change techniques (BCTs) will be used as a basis for scientifically deriving the conversational elements, or micro-mechanisms, that reduce parent-teen conflict and facilitate upward spirals of healthful behavior change. This proposal builds on pilot data from a recently completed NICHD-funded R01 in which a sleep treatment improved sleep and reduced risk on selected outcomes in youth. While sleep-related health behaviors will be the focus of this R21, the research is designed to be relevant to a broad range of health behavior change. As part of an Administrative Supplement to the R21 awarded in Fall, 2019, two changes are made. First, measures of psychophysiology have been added to the Hot Topics Task. Second, an independent sample of teens who are healthy sleepers (n = 20), and their parents, will be tested on the protocol twice, 9 weeks apart. This comparison group is included to control for the passage of time and for completing the protocol twice. They do not receive an intervention.
