Clinical trial NCT05267132: Adolescent Acts of Kindness Intervention With Reflection
Official title: Adolescent Acts of Kindness Intervention With Reflection
Study type: INTERVENTIONAL
Overall status: RECRUITING
Phase: NA
Conditions: Mental Health Wellness 1
Keywords: adolescence
psychological well-being
social connection
kindness
Lead sponsor: University of California, Los Angeles
Sponsor class: OTHER
First posted: 2022-03-04
Enrollment: 120
Sex: ALL
Minimum age (years): 14
Maximum age (years): 17
Standard ages: CHILD
Accepts healthy volunteers: yes
Allocation: RANDOMIZED
Intervention model: PARALLEL
Intervention model description: 120 participants will randomly be assigned to one of three conditions. Participants will complete a 4-week intervention. All outcomes will be measured before and after the intervention, and some psychological measures will be collected weekly throughout the intervention.
Primary purpose: BASIC_SCIENCE

Brief summary: Adolescents will complete a 4-week intervention, during which they will either complete a kind act for others, complete a kind act for others with a reflection component, or report their daily activities three days per week. Psychological measures will be indexed before and after the intervention.

Detailed description: There is growing policy and scientific interest in promoting the positive benefits of kindness and prosociality. This is particularly true for adolescents, whose psychological and social maturation offers fertile ground in which kindness can be seeded early in life with potentially positive effects on their psychological health. Much of the existing efforts have focused on large-scale community engagement and service-learning programs. Investigating less costly and time-intensive alternatives is necessary to broaden engagement and access. This project aims to implement one such effort with an enhanced acts of kindness intervention for adolescents. The enhancement incorporates existing evidence that requiring adolescents to reflect upon and savor their experience of helping others promotes the positive impact of such interventions. 120 high-school-aged youth will be recruited and assigned to one of three groups (40/group). Participants will either conduct a kind act for others, complete a kind act for others with a reflection component (enhanced condition), or report their daily activities three days per week for 4 weeks. During this intervention, they will receive text messages 3 days per week instructing them to complete their respective act. Participants will provide a brief description of this act that evening, as well as complete brief surveys at the end of the week for each week of the intervention. Participants will also complete a pre- and post-intervention questionnaire and participants' parents will complete a brief survey at the start of the study to provide demographic information and an idea of what prosocial behaviors participants witnessed in their home. The investigators will use these data to assess the effects of prosocial behavior on psychological health. Conceptual frameworks from developmental psychology guide the hypothesis that prosocial behavior will influence adolescents.

Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

* Between the ages of 14-17

Exclusion Criteria:

* None

Primary outcomes:
measure: Average Positive Affect
timeFrame: Weekly over 5 weeks
Secondary outcomes:
measure: Average Psychological Flourishing
timeFrame: Baseline and one-week post intervention (elapsed time of 5 weeks)
measure: Average Negative Affect
timeFrame: Weekly over 5 weeks
Other outcomes:
measure: Average Stress
timeFrame: Weekly over 5 weeks
measure: Sleep Quality
timeFrame: Weekly over 5 weeks
measure: Average Social Connection
timeFrame: Weekly over 5 weeks
Locations:
city: Los Angeles
country: United States
facility: Adolescent Development Lab
state: California
Study officials:
affiliation: University of California, Los Angeles
name: Andrew J Fuligni, PhD
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
References: