What is the aim of this pilot study ?*
We are looking for families (mother, father and a biological child between 10 and 12 years old) to participate in our pilot study. In this study, we will investigate how parents and children interact and recover from stressful situations. With the information we get from your participation in the study, you will help us determine the validity of our methods and estimate the feasibility of the study on a larger scale. You'll also help us understand more about how children and their parents interact and in what ways family members help each other cope better with tension and stress.
This Pilot study consists of three parts:
-
First, we'll ask the three of you to fill in online questionnaires at home (this part will take about 30 min per person and can be done in several parts).
-
Then, you'll come to our laboratory (located in Louvain-la-Neuve), to carry out a family discussion task. During this task, all three of you will wear glasses that record your eye movements, as well as a device that measures your heart activity and sweating. This part lasts about 1 hour. At the end of this session, you'll receive an FNAC voucher worth 45 euros.
-
Finally, in the third and last part of the study, we'd like to look at the stress and emotions you feel in your daily life. To do this, you, your partner and your child will be asked to answer a series of questions, every evening for three weeks (the time needed to complete the questionnaire is around 5 minutes). We'll send you the questions via a secure application developed by KU Leuven researchers (m-path). This will need to be installed on your smartphones and/or tablets. This part will be remunerated according to the number of daily questionnaires completed by your family: this additional compensation will be €20 if all family members (father, mother and child) complete at least 11 of the 21 questionnaires, and €75 if all family members complete at least 17 of the 21 questionnaires.
Why participate ?
Resilience, understood as the ability to resist and bounce back after stressful and adverse events, protects parents and children from developing psychopathology. Because daily family life requires constant adaptation to changing challenging situations, there is a need for research to better understand what makes families resilient. We will learn how parents and children can better cope with difficult situations that cause tension in daily life. This research can provide important information to develop family therapies or programmes to prevent the emergence of difficulties in the family.
If you want to participate, you can contact Doris Lacassagne by e-mail (doris.lacassagne@uclouvain.be) or by phone (0493/05.71.85).
*For now, we can only invite French-speaking families to this pilot study.