The Challenge

While many parents believe in the importance and value of high quality interactions with their children, there are many barriers that can get in the way of this happening. Whether that’s a shortage of time, ideas or confidence, many parents feel unequipped to improve the quality of interactions with their children.

“We look forward to capitalising on Shift’s expertise in this area to gain a more detailed understanding of parenting techniques across the full spectrum of society.”

Chris Cloke, Head of Safeguarding at the NSPCC

The Solution

A research project to inform a consumer facing communications campaign, targeting a wide audience, including those rarely engaged by traditional parenting campaigns.

We identified that a communications campaign should be built around three pillars:

  • Elevate – There is a need to help parents understand the importance of and normalise high quality interactions.
  • Educate – There is a need to help parents understand why high quality interactions are important, and to help them push back on outdated views on parenting that may be suggested to them by others that contradict this.
  • Equip – There is a need to show parents what good quality interactions look like and deliver tools that help them fit interactions into their daily activities.

So Far…

We undertook a six stage research methodology:

1. Scoping

A full review of current research and literature

2. Discovery

60+ participants in Digital Diaries, contributing 79 Videos, 539 images and 2509 posts

3. Interviews

With 38 participants, including parents, healthcare professionals and NSPCC Local Campaign Managers

4. Opportunity Development

Scoping the opportunity and an interim workshop

5. Opportunity Testing

9 focus groups, 8 interviews with hard to reach parents and 5 interviews with healthcare professionals

6. Quantitative survey

2000+ parents and expecting parents took a 15 minute online survey

We spoke to a mix of mums and dads of children aged 0-5 years. We ensured that different groups and needs were represented in the sample, including BAME groups, LGBTQ parents and single parents. A diversity of socio-economic groups were also involved, as well as including parents of differing working status, those experiencing poverty and social exclusion, people experiencing common mental health issues and parents of children with special educational needs. Parents were represented from across the whole of the UK.

Resulting Campaign

Off the back of our research, NSPCC launched a campaign encouraging parents to support their babies’ development, called Look, Say, Sing, Play.

 

Research

Comment

Coverage

NSPCC begins research for national behaviour-change campaign
Third Sector Magazine, March 2018