Friends of the Behavioral Economics Club, this week we present the paper “Behavioral Economics and Parent Participation in an Evidence-Based Parenting Program at Scale” by Hill, Z.; Spiegel, M.; Gennetian, L.; Hammer, K. A.; Brotman, L. y Dawson-McClure, S. (2021) in which authors try to apply behavioral economics’ methods in order to improve the attendance levels of families to parenting programs.
If there is something that parents care about, is knowing how they can contribute to make their children develop in a healthy, happy and complete way.
That is why evidence-based parenting programs exist. These programs have demonstrated they strengthen parents’ capacity to support their children’s development.
In fact, it has been shown that group-based, culturally relevant parenting programs increase warm, nurturing parent-child interactions, and involvement in children’s learning, besides decrease parent stress and produce long-lasting favorable impacts on children’s academic and health outcomes.
But a little problem exists: previous research of parenting programs in schools, show lower levels of attendance in families with few economic resources, racialized minorities, families with little social support and/or with high levels of psychological stress.
Moreover, some prejudices exist about parenting programs, such as that they are for “bad parents”.
That is why authors try to apply the behavioral economics’ approach to this topic, in order to optimize the participation of all families in parenting programs, no matter their circumstances.
Behavioral economics, as we already know, gathers theories and concepts of psychology and economics to understand, in this case, how context and personal circumstances, as poverty or racism, can affect decision-making.
Namely, behavioral economics starts from an understanding of human decision-making as a function of evaluating costs and benefits, as proposed in conventional economics. And, as economics considers money and time as finite resources, so does behavioral economics with cognitive resources.
The implications of finite cognitive resources are that allocation of such resources to one aspect of family life (for instance, paying rent) may drain cognitive resources for other aspects of family life (for example, reading or playing with a child).
Authors try to focus behavioral economics in how actual and previous experiences with poverty, financial instability, structural inequality and/or discrimination can shape or undermine intentions.
That is why authors and their researchers decided to use behavioral economics’ approach to improve parents participation in a program called “ParentCorps”.
This program, focused on families, is designed as a compliment to improve pre-kindergarten education. It is a public proposal in order to strengthen parents’ and teachers’ capacity to support the children’s development against difficulties.
What authors wondered was, firstly, if behavioral economics’ concepts could be applied successfully to strategies of the program. The second aim was to examine how testable components of the behavioral economics’ strategies influenced parents’ participation in the program, with the hypothesis that parents receiving behavioral economics’ outreach would, on average, have higher levels of program attendance.
The study was carried out with a total of 621 families of nine different districts in the selected zone. In four of these districts, behavioral economics’ tools were applied; but they weren’t in the other five.
It is important to mention that more of the 70% of the families that participated, lived below the poverty line.
Parents’ participation was measured using data collected through a signature sheet at the entrance where each session of the program took place, which lasted 14 weeks.
Obtained results weren’t what authors expected. Even though the districts in which behavioral economics’ materials and strategies were implemented had a prediction of greater participation by families, the reality is that the results did not overcome the barrier of statistical significance.
Families of the districts in which behavioral economics was applied, obtained an attendance percentage of 38%; the other families obtained 33%.
Nevertheless, it seems that with the information that authors had at their reach, they were unable to exactly determinate why this variation, this difference between one and other percentage, appeared.
This study has some limitations that is convenient to point out. One would be, for instance, that the proposal’s design for the experiment was useful for other contexts, but not for this one.
That is why authors mention the need of future research to delve into aspects like understanding contexts that may be affecting the behavior and decision-making of people. In this way, it would be possible to correct the limitations of the current paper.
If you want to know more about Behavioral Economics and how to apply it to human behavior, take a look to our Certificate in Behavioral Economics, a formative program, in English or Spanish, 100% online and certified by Heritage University (USA). Now, with discounts for members of this club.
