Background
No matter the age, everyone craves interaction and belonging, and storytelling creates this sense of belonging. Stories have the power to engage, influence, teach and inspire listeners.The emotional connection built when listening to a story, as opposed to reading raw facts or data, is far more stronger and pushes people to act in an altruistic, empathetic or prosocial manner.
Objective
Overall, this study aims to identify all relevant quantitative and qualitative literature in the area of storytelling and empathy among children aged 5 to 12 years, by adopting the Arksey and O'Malley (2005) framework.
Methods
Following the scoping review guidelines provided by Arksey and O'Malley, the underlisted electronic databases will be searched; MEDLINE, Scopus, PsycINFO, PsycArticles, CINAHL and Cochrane. Reference lists of articles, grey literature and journals would be screened to locate additional studies. Inclusion criteria will be strictly based on study aims and objectives.
Results
The results of this review will be reported using the PRISMA-ScR (Tricco et al., 2018). The results will address the primary research question and describe a summary of the available literature on storytelling interventions on children's empathy.
Conclusions
A scoping review of storytelling interventions and empathy outcomes for children has never been conducted due to a lack of literature. This report wants to fill this gap by summarizing what is known about this issue. Findings of this review will potentially inform future research into the effectiveness of storytelling interventions and point to the gaps in knowledge.