Questionnaires Used to Explore the Perspectives of Parents and Health Professionals on Young Children’s Use of Technology: Systematic Review
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Background Technology is integrated into many children’s daily lives, with parents’ and health professionals’ perspectives shaping children’s technology use. Measuring and understanding these perspectives are essential for developing strategies for supporting adults in decision-making that help children thrive in a digital world. Objective This systematic review aimed to investigate the psychometric properties of questionnaires used to assess parents’ and health professionals’ perspectives on young children’s use of technology related to health, well-being, and development. The secondary aim was to synthesize findings on these perspectives. Methods Peer-reviewed papers published between January 2010 and September 2024 were identified through searches in 7 electronic databases. Studies were included if they examined parental or health care professionals’ perspectives on technology use among children aged birth to 5 years. Two reviewers (CLR and IPHA) independently conducted the data extraction and study quality assessment. Reported psychometric properties of the questionnaires were synthesized. Deductive thematic analysis was used to explore the content focus of the questionnaire used in the included studies and synthesize the reported perspectives. Results In total, 85 studies were included, all involving parents. No study investigated health professionals’ perspectives. The methodological quality of the studies was generally low, with 62 studies scoring below the threshold for acceptable quality. In total, 52 studies reported psychometric properties of the questionnaires used, of which, only 15 studies reported more than 1 measure of validity or reliability. A total of 75 studies reported participants’ perspectives on children’s technology use. Findings revealed that parents generally supported the role of digital devices in enhancing learning but expressed concerns about potential negative impacts on children’s physical health, emotions, and behaviors. Conclusions Parents’ perspectives on children’s technology use were frequently assessed through questionnaires, though the validity of these questionnaires was often poor, with limited psychometric testing. Parental perspectives were mixed with educational benefits being recognized, while countered with concerns about the impact on children’s physical health and development. High-quality questionnaires are needed to generate stronger evidence informing strategies to support families in technology use decision-making with and for children.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.049 | 0.173 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.010 | 0.011 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.027 | 0.025 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.007 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".