Impacts and costs of a mass media program on children's emotion knowledge, recognition, and regulation in Jordan: A cluster-randomized controlled trial

We evaluate Ahlan Simsim, an emotional development-focused television show produced by Sesame Workshop and Jordan Pioneers, through a cluster-randomized controlled trial in Jordan preprimary classrooms (n = 216 schools, 4,369 children; endline Mage = 66.9 months; 51% female; 97% Jordanian, 3% Syrian; data collected 2021–2022). Treatment classrooms received daily Ahlan Simsim viewing added to the KG2 curriculum for 12 weeks; control classrooms received the curriculum alone. Significant positive impacts were found on expressive emotion recognition, emotion situation knowledge, and one emotion regulation strategy, breathing, but not receptive emotion recognition or other emotion regulation strategies. Effect sizes (d) range from 0.11 to 0.36. Costs of intervention delivery are estimated at $3–7 per child. Implications for children's media and social-emotional learning interventions are discussed.