Previous screen-time questions in Growing Up in Ireland

In terms of cross-cohort comparisons with Cohort 08 at age 3, it is likely that exact

comparisons over time will need to be given up in favour of capturing the current

context more accurately. There were three questions asked at that phase: amount of

time the child spent watching television, rules about content; and if there was a

television, computer or console in the child’s bedroom.

The questionnaire for Cohort 24 at 9 months had a stand-alone question on the

amount of time per day the infant spent watching screens (including phones and

tablets). This was in conjunction with a ‘screen-time’ subscale of the Parent Play

Questionnaire that had additional questions about whom the infant watched screen-

based content with. However, a 3-year-old child will be able to engage much more

interactively with digital material and so there may be limited usefulness in this

subscale going forward.

Cohort 24 at 9 months also included questions to parents about their own use of

screen-time for leisure. These would be useful to continue at age 3, given the

potential for parental use of screens to disrupt interactions with the child, contribute

to passive-viewing of adult-oriented content by the child, and the possibility for

excessive screen-time to be ‘modelled’ as a behaviour (e.g. Canadian Pediatric

Society, 2017; Hoyos Cillero & Jago, 2010). To consider these implications, an

additional question as to what proportion of the parent’s overall leisure screen-time

occurs in the presence of the child would be required.

Seven-in-seven screen exposure questionnaire (Yalçin et al. 2021)