The project carried out the following six work packages (WP) and achieved most of the objectives with some deviations: (i) to systematically review theoretical literature on the parenting for children’s Internet use, (ii) parental awareness, mediation strategy, and self-efficacy scales, (iii) to invite a panel of experts for the content validation, (iv) to assess reliability and validity of the three scales, (v) to provide a best practice guideline, and (vi) a training module on parenting for children’s Internet use.
The WP1 achieved its objective through a critical review of literature on parental awareness, mediation strategies, and self-efficacy concerning children’s Internet use. The review was published in an open access journal as a bi-factor conceptualization of parental mediation and a transactional framework of parenting for children’s Internet use These can be used by researchers, educators, and policymakers to understand the transactional parent-child-Internet-risk characteristics.
The WP 2 and 3 complementarily achieved their objectives as a critical review and content validation of parental mediation scales. The review outlined the scale items measuring parental mediation of children's Internet use, including a description of each item, its rationale, and its scoring. An invited panel of eight experienced researchers in the field of children’s Internet Use assessed the content validity. Based on this assessment, the review has proposed a trichotomy of restrictive-enabling-observant parental mediation and their conceptual definitions for further research. The proposed scale items and model have been published in an open-access journal and used to evaluate the effectiveness of a parenting intervention program.
The WP 4 achieved its objective by testing the reliability and validity of the parental awareness, mediation strategy, and self-efficacy scales. First a common factor analysis of the EU Kids Online survey data was conducted. However, the objective was not fully met through this secondary data analysis. Therefore, the research fellow collaborated with colleagues in conducting additional studies. The exploitable results have been disseminated through six publications in peer-reviewed journals (open access) and two presentations at conferences. The publications are valuable resources for researchers and practitioners interested in using the scales to measure parental awareness, mediation strategy, and self-efficacy.
The objective the WP 5 was to provide a best practice guideline on parenting for children's Internet use, with a specific focus on addressing online risks among ethnic minorities in Europe. This objective has been partially achieved. The review of literature on ethnicity-based parenting for children’s Internet use found insufficient evidence, providing no evidence-based guideline. Instead, evidence from non-European countries (e.g. Israel, USA, and Australia) was reviewed and published in an open access journal and shared through online workshops. Four online workshops were conducted for non-governmental organizations (NGOs), such as the European Centre for Minority Issues (Flensburg, Germany) and Musicantia/National Roma Centre (Dublin, Ireland).
The WP 6 also partially achieved its objective. Due to the inadequacy of the available evidence, it was not possible to develop a training module on ethnicity-based parenting for children's Internet use. Consequently, instead of creating a new module based on insufficient evidence, the effectiveness of an ongoing parenting intervention program (i.e. FUSE) was tested through the collaboration with the DCU-Anti-Bullying Centre. This test resulted in proposing four anti-bullying self-efficacy scales and models for children. Three papers presenting the research findings have been published with the open-access option in a peer-reviewed journal.
