Peer-reviewed article
An Empirical Investigation of Factors Affecting Perceived Quality and Well-Being of Children Using an Online Child Helpline
Willemijn van Dolen, Charles B. Weinberg ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This study examines how online chat characteristics affect children's perceived quality of support and well-being when using a child helpline. The research found that for children seeking emotional support, longer chats and more counsellor talking reduced well-being, while more child talking improved it. For children seeking practical help, counsellors needed to provide more written support. The findings suggest counsellors should adapt their approach based on whether children need emotional listening or practical advice.
Key points
- Longer chat duration negatively influences immediate well-being for children seeking emotional support
- For emotional support, higher ratio of child words to counsellor words results in higher quality evaluations
- For instrumental support, counsellors need to type more to create positive perceptions of quality
- Chat helplines have no barriers to access and serve as first point of contact with child protection for many children
- More children contact helplines during periods of high unemployment, with more conversations about violence
Limitations
The study does not specify the sample size, demographic characteristics of participating children, or whether results were analysed by age group or specific issue type. It is unclear whether the findings apply universally across different helpline contexts or are specific to the particular helpline studied.
Abstract
Child helplines provide free, accessible, and confidential support for children suffering from issues such as violence and abuse. Helplines lack the barriers often associated with the use of many other health services; and for many children, the helpline is the first point of contact with any kind of child protection and an important venue to go to in times of socio-economic distress. For instance, more children attempt to call the helpline in times of high unemployment, and relatively more of those conversations are about violence. Empirical evidence is scarce regarding how to implement online chat communication to improve quality and the child's well-being. In this study, we focus on the impact of chat duration, number of words, and the type of support. The results show that for children seeking emotional support, a longer chat negatively influences the immediate well-being and the counsellor needs to listen (i.e., not type), as relatively more child words result in higher evaluations. We conclude that for emotional support, the counsellor should be prepared to listen carefully, but also manage the duration. However, for children chatting for instrumental support, the counsellor needs to type more to create positive perceptions of quality. Since the impact of chat share is different for children seeking emotional support (negative) versus instrumental support (positive), counsellors need to be sensitive to early indicators of the reason for the chat.
Findings the Hub has extracted
Each claim below is labelled by its type of design and links back to this report.
- Intervention
- Online chat-based child helpline with varying counsellor communication approaches (duration management, listening versus typing, adapted to support type)
- Population
- Children using an online child helpline seeking emotional or instrumental support
Key finding
For emotional support: longer chat duration negatively influences immediate well-being