Behavioral Economics and Parent Participation in an Evidence-Based Parenting Program at Scale
- Resource Type
- Authors
- Kai Ama Hamer; Laurie Miller Brotman; Spring Dawson-McClure; Zoelene Hill; Lisa A. Gennetian; Michelle Spiegel
- Source
- Prevention Science
- Subject
- Adult
Parents
050103 clinical psychology
medicine.medical_specialty
Evidence-based practice
education
BE
Context (language use)
Behavioral economics
Article
medicine
Humans
0501 psychology and cognitive sciences
Child
Medical education
Schools
Parenting
Economics, Behavioral
Public health
05 social sciences
Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health
Attendance
Low-income
Outreach
Health psychology
Parent engagement
Text messaging
Scale (social sciences)
Parenting program
Educational Status
Psychology
050104 developmental & child psychology
- Language
- ISSN
- 1573-6695
1389-4986
Evidence-based and culturally relevant parenting programs strengthen adults’ capacity to support children’s health and development. Optimizing parent participation in programs implemented at scale is a prevailing challenge. Our collaborative team of program developers, implementers, and researchers applied insights from the field of behavioral economics (BE) to support parent participation in ParentCorps—a family-centered program delivered as an enhancement to pre-kindergarten—as it scaled in a large urban school district. We designed a bundle of BE-infused parent outreach materials and successfully showed their feasibility in site-level randomized pilot implementation. The site-level study did not show a statistically significant impact on family attendance. A sub-study with a family-level randomization design showed that varying the delivery time of BE-infused digital outreach significantly increased the likelihood of families attending the parenting program. Lessons on the potential value of a BE-infused approach to support outreach and engagement in parenting programs are discussed in the context of scaling up efforts. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11121-021-01249-0.