ParentText User Engagement and Effectiveness Study

Research has shown that the modification of parenting programmes from being held in-person to being delivered digitally has been successful. Meta-analytic and systematic reviews carried out in HMICs have illustrated that digital parenting interventions have similar effect sizes to in-person interventions. Although these results are promising, there are few gaps within the literature that have not been addressed. First, the majority of research is being conducted in High-Income Countries (HICs). Therefore, results cannot be generalised to LMICs, where differences in context and culture could have an impact on the effectiveness of digital parenting interventions. Second, parenting interventions are deployed on a variety of different technological platforms, however, a limited amount of research has focused on examining emerging platforms, with the focus primarily being on app or internet-based interventions. Therefore little is known in regards to the effectiveness of more novel intervention platforms, such as chatbots.

Whilst the digitalisation of parenting programmes allows for the widespread dissemination and utilisation of the intervention, engagement rates for digital interventions remain low. Engagement with digital behaviour change interventions can be described as the extent (e.g. amount, frequency, duration, depth) of usage, and as a subjective experience characterised by attention, interest and affect. Low engagement compromises the effectiveness of parenting programmes, as the user is required to enrol and engage with the intervention for the programme to have an influence on behaviour. Intervention developers have begun employing technological platforms, such as chatbots, that are designed with the intention to overcome low user engagement rates.

Parenting research investigating digital intervention components which facilitate engagement remains scarce. Broadening the scope beyond the field of parenting, reviews of quantitative and qualitative research examining digital behaviour change interventions, identified an assortment of behaviour change techniques and persuasive system design principles which have been found to facilitate and impede engagement and effectiveness. However, few consistent patterns emerged regarding what techniques and principles consistently facilitate engagement and effectiveness, and for whom. There is a requirement for the isolated techniques and principles utilised within digital parenting interventions to be tested, to identify which intervention components influence engagement and intervention effectiveness and apply this research to optimise parenting interventions.

The first aim of this study is to optimise user engagement in ParentText and to identify the optimal delivery of ParentText for parents/caregivers from low- and middle-income countries. The investigators will be addressing three research questions:

1. How do different component levels impact ParentText user engagement and retention in terms of a) message personalisation (high/low), b) gendered targeted messages (on/off), c) gamification of module completions (on/off) and d) frequency of messages (high/low)?
2. Are there any interaction effects between different component levels of ParentText on user engagement and retention?
3. How does the effectiveness of each component or component level on user engagement vary by different population characteristics (i.e., parent/child age and gender, parent/caregiver marital status, parent/caregiver relationship to the child, and experience of COVID-19)?