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The impact of nudge communication mode, presentation, and sender on parental visits to a state literacy program website in Arkansas

Region:

Southwest

Abstract:

Description: Parent engagement in their child's education can be fundamental to a student's academic development. The Arkansas Department of Education (ADE) aims to understand best practices for parent outreach to encourage equitable engagement with parents.

To support ADE's goal, Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Southwest is conducting a study to examine the feasibility and effectiveness of a low-cost "nudge" communications intervention to increase parent visits to an ADE website designed for parents of elementary school students. The intervention provides communications (text and email messages) to parents to encourage them to visit the website. The Arkansas Reading Initiative for Student Excellence (R.I.S.E.) and the R.I.S.E. literacy website hosted by ADE provides the context for the study. R.I.S.E. aims to coordinate statewide efforts among stakeholders, including parents, to improve child literacy. ADE is interested in understanding the impact of the communications on parent responses and on applying evidence from the study to other contexts and priorities for communicating with and encouraging engagement among parents.

Research Questions:

  1. What percentage of elementary school households were successfully contacted by ADE?
    1. What percentage of households approved ADE's request to access and use the contact information?
    2. What percentage of households had functioning email accounts and cell phone numbers at the beginning of the study?
    3. Did the percentages of households that approved ADE's request to use the contact information and that had accurate and functioning contact information vary by rural/nonrural school locale or school demographic composition?
  2. What percentage of elementary school households received the emails or texts in each round of communications?
    1. What percentage of households opened email messages or their local phone carriers were delivered text messages?
    2. Did the percentage of households that opened email messages or received texts vary by rural/nonrural school locale or school demographic composition?
  3. Did the mode, presentation, or sender of a nudge communication impact the average percentage of Arkansas elementary school households that visit the R.I.S.E. landing page and the time spent on the page?
    1. Did the fully enhanced nudge strategy (adding a text message, a graphic, and a known sender) increase the average percentage of households that visit the R.I.S.E. landing page and their time spent on the page compared with the base condition (email only, no graph, no known sender)?
    2. Did the mode, presentation, or sender of a nudge communication impact the average percentage of Arkansas elementary school households who visit the R.I.S.E. landing page and time spent on the page for subgroups of schools (rural schools; schools with above median percentages of low-income, Black or Hispanic, or English learner students; schools with above median percentages of parents approving ADE access to their contact information)?

Study Design: The study will use a school-level factorial randomized controlled trial design including three treatment factors. The factors include the mode, presentation, and sender for the message. Each of these three factors has two possible communications approaches:

  • Mode — communication sent by email or text
  • Presentation — textual information or textual information plus images
  • Sender — message sent by ADE or school principal

REL Southwest will randomly assign schools to a treatment condition defined by combinations of the three factors. Each of these are relevant considerations for messaging according to the evidence base. All families enrolled in Arkansas public elementary schools will be eligible to participate in the study.

Projected Release Data: Fall 2022

Research Alliance: REL Southwest College and Career Readiness Research Partnership

Study Related Products: The study will produce a report and a one-page snapshot.

Data management plan: View, download, and print the Data Management Plan as a PDF file (284 KB)

Principal Investigators & Affiliation:

Canadce Hester, American Institutes for Research; Anja Kurki, American Institutes for Research; Andrew Jaciw, Empirical Education