January 15, 2025, Durham, NC – iRT Research Scientists Drs. Alison Parker and Tracy Scull will present findings from an evaluation of DigiKnowIt News at a poster session at the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) 2025 Biennial Meeting.
The SRCD 2025 Biennial Meeting will be held May 1-3, 2025 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The meeting provides opportunities for attendees to share and discuss findings from basic and applied research aimed at providing a better understanding of child development.
About the Presentation
Drs. Parker’s and Scull’s poster presentation, entitled A multimedia resource to educate and empower children to make decisions about clinical trial participation, will outline findings from an evaluation of the impact of DigiKnowIt News on children’s knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and self-efficacy related to clinical trials participation.
Researchers across the nation struggle to recruit an adequate number of children to participate in their clinical trials. Fear of risks, lack of information, and misinformation about pediatric clinical trials are the main reasons children are unmotivated or unwilling to participate in research.1 DigiKnowIt News is one of the first interactive, educational websites designed with the specific goal of helping researchers recruit participants for pediatric clinical trials by educating children on various aspects of pediatric research. The website targets the most common barriers to pediatric clinical trials to decrease youth skepticism and fear about participating in research, and increase youth knowledge, confidence, and positive attitudes about participating in a clinical trial.
Drs. Parker’s and Scull’s poster presentation at the SCRD Biennial Meeting will provide insight into how DigiKnowIt News may educate and empower children, so they can make better decisions about their participation in clinical trials, based on a randomized controlled trial conducted with 91 children from across the United States. These findings will highlight how DigiKnowIt News may be a helpful resource for pediatric researchers to achieve greater participation and retention in their studies.
To learn more about the SRCD 2025 Biennial Meeting, visit https://www.srcd.org/event/srcd-2025-biennial-meeting.
To learn more about DigiKnowIt News, visit https://digiknowit.com/.
- Tromp, K., Zwaan, C. M., & van de Vathorst, S. (2016). Motivations of children and their parents to participate in drug research: a systematic review. European Journal of Pediatrics, 175(5), 599–612.