Assessing the Efficacy of a Song to Improve Body Appreciation Among Young Children: A Cluster Randomised Controlled Trial in UK Primary Schools

Body image develops in early childhood and by age four children report negative feelings towards their body and negative attitudes (e.g., weight-stigmatising attitudes) towards others. Body image concerns are associated with low self-esteem, disordered eating, and academic disengagement as children emerge into adolescence and as such, it is important to intervene and implement age-appropriate prevention strategies as early as possible. One key prevention strategy, endorsed by scholars and body image experts is to foster positive body image among children through the development and evaluation of interventions.

Blippi is a globally loved children's programme with over 18 million subscribers on YouTube. Blippi provides educational learning for children as young as four, with the most popular content via fun and interactive videos on YouTube and Netflix. In 2024, researchers at the Centre for Appearance Research developed a series of songs and associated music videos in collaboration with Moonbug Entertainment (creative partners and creators of children's media programmes, including creators of Blippi) and the Dove Self-Esteem Project (the funders of this project). The investigators ran a randomised controlled trial with 4-6 year olds and found that the music video was protective of children's body appreciation, when compared to an active control condition.

The current study aims to expand on these findings and assess whether the evaluated song can offer protective effects on body appreciation when listened to as audio content only (i.e., without visual content). This is an important question to answer, as within the banquet of content created by Blippi is audio content available via popular streaming platforms such as Apple Music and Spotify. Understanding the isolated impact the audio content is useful for two reasons: to promote viable dissemination strategies for the content (i.e., is promoting the audio content on audio streaming platforms compromising the effectiveness of the content, or enhancing the reach of an effective intervention?), and contributes to the wider literature examining the impact on audio content on children's socio-emotional development.

This study aims to answer three research questions:

RQ1 (Primary): Is body appreciation protected after listening to the song, relative to the control song? Hypothesis 1: The researchers anticipate that body appreciation of children randomised to the intervention condition will be protected immediately after listening to the song, relative to a control song.