Surfeel: teaching children to verbalise emotions

Last registered on March 30, 2026

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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title

Surfeel: teaching children to verbalise emotions

RCT ID

AEARCTR-0012855

Initial registration date

January 19, 2024

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published

January 19, 2024, 2:24 PM EST

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Last updated

March 30, 2026, 10:46 AM EDT

Last updated is the most recent time when changes to the trial's registration were published.

Locations

Country

Portugal

Region

Primary Investigator

Name

Anna Person

Affiliation

University of Cologne

Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name

Barbara Boelmann

PI Affiliation

University of Cologne

PI Name

PI Affiliation

PI Name

PI Affiliation

University of Cologne

Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status

In development

Start date

2024-11-12

End date

2026-07-31

Keywords

Behavior, Education, Welfare

Additional Keywords

JEL code(s)

Secondary IDs

Prior work

This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.

Abstract

Emotions can be overwhelming and result in aggressive and uncooperative behaviour, especially when we have no appropriate strategy to deal with them. We evaluate a school-based programme, Surfeel, which teaches primary school children socio-emotional skills, enabling them to find appropriate strategies to cope with uncomfortable situations through verbalisation. We hypothesise that the implementation of the programme will result in a less aggressive learning environment which will improve children’s educational outcomes. To test this, we will first look at reported bullying incidents in treated classes. Secondly, we will investigate how children’s grades evolve over the course of the programme. Last, we will collect pre and post treatment data in treated and control classes about the children's abilities to recognize and express emotions; their feelings in class; through surveys as well as drawings.

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation

Person, Anna et al. 2026. "Surfeel: teaching children to verbalise emotions." AEA RCT Registry. March 30. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.12855-1.5

Sponsors & Partners

Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

Intervention (Hidden)

Intervention Start Date

2024-12-02

Intervention End Date

2025-06-30

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

Educational outcomes (grades); bullying incidents and social worker interventions; learning environment measured by teachers' perception, both the teacher administering the treatment as well as another teacher not knowing the program; emotional intelligence of subjects measured through parents' reports of children’s behaviours and direct evaluation of subjects through standardized tests and drawings.

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

We run an RCT to evaluate a school-based intervention in Portugal which teaches children socioemotional skills by enabling them to verbalise their feelings in a playful way, primarily through videos and songs.
We randomize treatment assignment at the class level, so that we will be able to compare children who did and did not receive the treatment within the same school district and grade, to exclude any possible confounder given by regional differences and age of participants.
The intervention is developed and distributed by Ginja. The programme is prepared to be used in schools directly and is divided into 36 separate sessions, consisting of 5-10 minutes of videos, 5-10 minutes of discussion and 30-40 minutes of arts/crafts activity. Teachers usually teach one or two sessions a week, making the intervention last between 18 and 36 weeks.
The programme is based mainly on Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (Beck, 1975) and on Transactional Analysis (Ian Stewart, 1987). It further draws from Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (Kabat-Zinn, 2005) and contemporary research on the impact of emotional awareness by Brackett (2019).

References:
BECK, A. (1975). Cognitive Therapy and the emotional disorders. Plume.
BRACKETT, M. (2019). Permission to feel: unlocking the power of emotions to help our kids, ourselves, and our society thrive. Celadon Books.
STEWART, I., JOINES, V.. (1987). TA Today: A New Introduction to Transactional Analysis.
KABAT-ZINN, J. (2005). Wherever you go, there you are: Mindfulness meditation for everyday life. Hachette Books.

Experimental Design Details

Randomization Method

Randomization done in office by a computer

Randomization Unit

Class

Was the treatment clustered?

Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters

25 classrooms in 3 school districts; 12 classes in 1 school district in additional sample.

Sample size: planned number of observations

492; 240 in additional sample.

Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms

13 treated classes, 12 control classes; 6 treated classes, 6 control classes in additional sample.

Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)

Supporting Documents and Materials

Documents

Document Name

Randomization Code

Document Type

other

Document Description

This file shows the code used for randomizing which class gets the treament and which one is in the control group. We randomize at the class level within school, separately for kindergarten and elementary school classes. For small schools, we randomize at the school level.

As seed, we use the DAX Index value at 2 Dec 2024, 11:00 am CET.

File

Randomization Code

MD5: 3cf175ce960fbeb7738d1843a5ef808c

SHA1: dc6a77a484842aa1cba8f4d4ceaada66e8e2fe7b

Uploaded At: December 02, 2024

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