This feasibility clinical trial aims to assess the feasibility of implementing a 1-month app-based meditation program with officers in the juvenile legal system and other professionals working directly with legal-involved youth.
Professionals working with legal-involved youth experience high levels of depression, anxiety, and workplace burnout. Mindfulness meditation targets emotion regulation-which appears to be a common mechanism underlying depression, anxiety, and burnout-and it can be effectively delivered via smartphone app. This project will assess the feasibility of implementing a 1-month app-based meditation program with officers and other professionals working with legal-involved youth in Cook County, which houses one of the nation's largest juvenile legal systems. The findings are intended to inform the development of a future, fully-powered hybrid effectiveness-implementation randomized controlled trial (RCT).
Study Type
INTERVENTIONAL
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
PREVENTION
Masking
SINGLE
Enrollment
50
AIM+ is a smartphone-based app that teaches mindfulness meditation to professionals working with legal-involved youth over a 30-day "path." Each day of the path consists of a brief (approximately 5- to 10-minute) audio-guided meditation practice, with brief videos interspersed to illustrate key concepts and promote engagement. In addition to the 30 daily path files, users have access to a menu of "to go" audio-guided meditation practices that they can use as relevant to their workday (e.g., for professionals to listen to before attending a meeting). AIM+ also includes a menu of audio-guided meditation practices that officers can share with the youth on their caseloads (e.g., for youth to listen to before attending court).
Resource+ is a smartphone-based app that is matched to AIM+ for time and structure, but it includes information on community resources that professionals can provide to the youth with whom they work in place of the meditation content featured in AIM+.
University of Illinois Chicago
Chicago, Illinois, United States
RECRUITINGApp adherence
Days of objective app usage
Time frame: 1 month
Acceptability
Measured by Acceptability of Intervention Measure (AIM). This scale measures acceptability using 4 items, each item rated on a 5-point scale and averaged to yield total scale scores between 1 and 5; higher scores indicate greater acceptability.
Time frame: 1 month
Appropriateness
Measured with the Intervention Appropriateness Measure (IAM). This scale measures appropriateness using 4 items, each item rated on a 5-point scale and averaged to yield total scale scores between 1 and 5; higher scores indicate greater appropriateness.
Time frame: 1 Month
Feasibility of App Implementation
Measured with the Feasibility of Intervention Measure (FIM). This scale measures feasibility using 4 items, each item rated on a 5-point scale and averaged to yield total scale scores between 1 and 5; higher scores indicate greater feasibility.
Time frame: 1 month
Usability
Measured with the System Usability Scale (SUS). This scale measures the usability of products and designs, specifically effectiveness, efficiency, and user satisfaction using 10 items, each item is rated on a 5-point scale; items calculated to produce a total score between 0 and 100; higher scores generally indicate greater usability.
Time frame: 1 month
Satisfaction with intervention
Measured with the Client Satisfaction Questionnaire (CSQ-8). This scale measures satisfaction using 8 items, each item is rated on a 4-point scale; total sum scores range from 8 to 32; higher scores indicate higher satisfaction.
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Time frame: 1 month
Penetration
Measured via objective app analytics. * App analytics track referrals to our clinical trials made by participants through their study app to (a) other officers and (b) youth in the legal system. * App analytics track the use by participants of files from their study app that are intended to be shared with youth (i.e., meditation practices to play with youth in the AIM+ app, or resources to be shared with youth in the Resource+ app).
Time frame: 1 and 6 month