Brussoni – risk-reframing tool research

Funded by the Lawson Foundation, we created a risk reframing tool. And so the idea behind the tool is really that one of the biggest barriers around children’s risky play is fear, and in this case we’re targeting parents so parent fears of things like injury or kidnapping or getting hit by a car, you know, or getting bullied by other children or, actually, even other parents calling them out for letting their kids engage in risky play. 

So we wanted to create a tool that was evidence-based, that used the health behaviour change theory to take parents through a series of steps of self-reflection exercises. To think about what was actually their priority and how do they approach those priorities for their children and, maybe, what were the limits they were setting and why? And just go through that self-reflection to then ultimately come up with a plan for how they wanted to change. And it was based on workshops we’ve been running for a couple of years. 

So we wanted a way for; kind of nice, short, discreet, for anybody to be able to access it anywhere, for groups like daycares or others to be able to share it with their parents that come to their daycare so that they can understand why things are going on, you know things like that and for parents to start conversations with each other, even. 

So our next step, which we’re about to start, is a randomized controlled trial. So, essentially, we’re going to be checking the effectiveness. You know, does it work to change parents’ attitudes and behaviours? And so we have parents assigned to one of three groups. So, the first group will do the tool, the second group will do the workshop, which is the one we’ve been running kind of all along, and then the third group will actually just look at the position statement, so that’s our control group. 

And so we’ll take measurements of their attitudes and kind of approach before they do anything and then one week after the intervention, and then again three months later, to see if we see a longer-term change in their approach. So, it will be another year and a half or so before that research is done and then we’ll be publishing and putting it out in the public realm.