Using Behavioral Insights for Parental Engagement: The Parents and Children Together Intervention

Research shows that cognitive development in early childhood is best
promoted if parents create learning opportunities for their children in the
home environment. In particular, reading aloud to children has many
benefits. Unfortunately, many young low-income children in the U.S. are
not read to on a regular basis. Many parents find it challenging to carve
out time each day to engage with their children in educational activities,
and parents’ busy lives make it hard to create and stick to a routine of
reading and other learning activities.

The PACT Study is a six-week experimental intervention developed for
English and Spanish-speaking parents with children enrolled in Head
Start programs in Chicago. Participating parents borrow an electronic
tablet with an application called A Story Before Bed, a recordable
storybook app with over 500 books in its digital library. The parents who
are randomly assigned to the experimental group set weekly goals for
the amount of time they intend to spend reading a book from the digital
library to their children and receive daily text message reminders
reminding them of their goals. At the end of each week, experimental
group parents receive visual feedback on the actual time they spent
reading in the prior week via a goal-setting app on the tablet. Finally,
experimental group parents receive personal recognition on the tablet
for meeting their weekly time-use goals in addition to recognition among
their peers via group text messaging. Control group parents receive the
tablet with A Story Before Bed and instructions for how to use it but
none of the behavioral “nudges” (i.e., the goal setting, text-message
reminding, feedback, or recognition).