Skip to main content

The Impact of Default Options for Parent Participation in an Early Language Intervention

Journal of Child and Family Studies volume 29, pages 3565–3574 (2020)Cite this article

Abstract

In this study we tested, via a randomized control study design, different enrollment options for a scaled city-wide text-based early learning program among 405 mothers who were receiving newborn home visiting services. We found that when automatically enrolled with a voluntary option to opt out, 88.7% of mothers in the experimental group stayed in the program and continued to receive the text-based content over the course of 26 weeks. In contrast, only 1% of mothers in the control group who heard about the text-based program through conventional recruitment flyers voluntarily enrolled in the program. Opt-out and opt-in patterns did not differ by characteristics typically considered as interfering with program participation: low income status, first-time motherhood status, total number of children, maternal language, flagging for depressive symptoms, and household residential instability. Findings suggest that automatic enrollment might be an effective engagement strategy for text- and similar digitally-based early childhood programs.

Highlights

  • We test automatic enrollment for participation in a scaled early learning program.

  • The majority of parents in the opt-out condition remained enrolled.

  • Few parents enrolled in the opt-in condition in response to informational flyers.

  • Opting-out did not vary by key demographic or socio-economic characteristics.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.

Access options

Buy single article

Instant access to the full article PDF.

USD 39.95

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Fig. 1

References

  • Axford, N., Lehtonen, M., Kaoukji, D., Tobin, K., & Berry, V. (2012). Engaging parents in parenting programs: lessons from research and practice. Children and Youth Services Review, 34, 2061–2071.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Baker, C. N., Arnold, D. H., & Meagher, S. (2011). Enrollment and attendance in a parent training prevention program for conduct problems. Prevention Science, 12, 126–138.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Baydar, N., Reid, M. J., & Webster-Stratton, C. (2003). The role of mental health factors and program engagement in the effectiveness of a preventive parenting program for Head Start mothers. Child Development, 74(5), 1433–1453.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Beniger, J. R. (1987). Personalization of mass media and the growth of pseudo-community. Communication Research, 14, 352–371.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Beshears, J., Choi, J. J., Laibson, D., & Madrian, B. C. (2009). The importance of default options for retirement saving outcomes: evidence form United States. In J. Brown, J. Liebman, & D. A. Wise (Eds.), Social security policy in a changing environment (pp. 167–195). University of Chicago Press.

  • Bloomquist, M. L., August, G. J., Susanne, S., Piehler, T. F., & Jensen, M. (2012). Parent participation within community center or in-home outreach delivery models of the early risers conduct problems prevention program. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 21(3), 368–383.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bornstein, M. H., Haynes, M. O., & Painter, K. M. (1998). Sources of child vocabulary competence: a multivariate model. Journal of Child Language, 25(2), 367–393.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brody, G., Murry, V., Chen, Y., Kogan, S., & Brown, A. (2006). Effects of family risk factors on dosage and efficacy of a family-centered preventive intervention for rural African Americans. Prevention Science, 7, 281–291.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Carroll, G., Choi, J., Laibson, D., Madrian, B., & Metrick, A. (2009). Optimal defaults and active decisions. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 124, 1639–1674.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chacko, A., Jensen, S. A., Lowry, L. S., Cornwell, M., Chimklis, A., Chan, E., Danie, L., & Pulgarin, B. (2016). Engagement in behavioral parent training: review of the literature and implications for practice. Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 19, 204–215.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chapman, G. B., Li, M., Colby, H., & Yoon, H. (2011). Opting in vs opting out of influenza vaccination. The Journal of American Medical Association, 304(1), 43–44.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Choi, J. J., Laibson, D., Madrian, B. C., & Metrick, A. (2004). For better or for worse: Default effects and 401(k) savings behavior. In D. A. Wise (Ed.). Perspectives in the economics of aging (pp 144–163). University of Chicago Press.

  • Coatsworth, J. D., Duncan, L. G., Pantin, H., & Szapocznik, J. (2006). Patterns of retention in a preventive intervention with ethnic minority families. Journal of Primary Prevention, 27(2), 171–193.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Conly, S. (2017). Paternalism, coercion and the (un)importance of some liberties. Behavioural Public Policy, 1(2), 207–218.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Daro, D., Hart, B., Boller, K., & Bradley, M. C. (2012). Replicating home visiting programs with fidelity: baseline data and preliminary findings. Report prepared for Children’s Bureau, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Mathematica Policy Research.

  • Dawson-McClure, S., Calzada, E., Huang, K. Y., Kamboukos, D., Rhule, D., Kolawole, B., Petkova, E., & Brothman, L. M. (2015). A population-level approach to promoting healthy child development and school success in low-income, urban neighborhoods: impact on parenting and child conduct problems. Prevention Science, 16, 279–290.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Duncan, G., & Magnuson, K. (2011). The nature and impact of early achievement skills, attention and behavior problems. In G. Duncan & R. Murnane (Eds.), Whither opportunity: rising inequality, schools, and children’s life chances (pp. 47–69). Russell Sage.

  • Eisner, M., & Meidert, U. (2011). Stages of parental engagement in a universal parent training program. Journal of Primary Prevention, 32(2), 83–93.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fernald, A., Marchman, V. A., & Weisleder, A. (2013). SES differences in language processing skill and vocabulary are evident at 18 months. Developmental Science, 16(2), 234–248.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Galinsky, E., Bezos, J., McClelland, M., Carlson, S. M., & Zelazo, P. D. (2017). Civic science for public use: mind in the making and vroom. Child Development, 88(5), 1409–1418.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • García, J. L., Heckman, J. J., Leaf, D. E., & Prados, M. A. (2016). The life-cycle benefits of an influential early childhood program. National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. W22999. NBER.

  • Gennetian, L., Darling, M., & Aber, J. L. (2016). Behavioral economics and developmental science: a new framework to support early childhood interventions. Journal of Applied Research on Children, 7(2), 1–35.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gennetian, L. A., & Shafir, E. (2015). The persistence of poverty in the context of financial instability: a behavioral perspective. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 34, 904–936.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Golinkoff, R. M., Hoff, E., Rowe, M. L., Tamis-LeMonda, C. S., & Hirsh-Pasek, K. (2019). Language matters: denying the existence of the 30-million-word gap has serious consequences. Child Development, 90(3), 985–992.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gomby, D. S. (2005). Home visitation in 2005: outcomes for children and parents. Invest in Kids Working Paper No. 7. Committee for Economic Development, Invest in Kids Working Group. www.ced.org/projects/kids.shtml.

  • Heckman, J. J. (2006). Skill formation and the economics of investing in disadvantaged children. Science, 312, 1900–1902.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hall, C. M., & Bierman, K. L. (2015). Technology-assisted interventions for parents of young children: emerging practices, current research, and future directions. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 33, 21–32.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hoff, E. (2003). The specificity of environmental influence: socioeconomic status affects early vocabulary development via maternal speech. Child Development, 74(5), 1368–1378.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hoff, E., & Naigles, L. (2002). How children use input to acquire a lexicon. Child Development, 73(2), 418–433.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hoff-Ginsberg, E. (1991). Mother-child conversation in different social classes and communicative settings. Child Development, 62(4), 782–796.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Johnson, E. J., & Goldstein, D. G. (2003). Do defaults save lives? Science, 302, 1338–1339.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mani, A., Mullainathan, S., Shafir, E., & Zhao, J. (2013). Poverty impedes cognitive function. Science, 341, 976–980.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Miller, E., Canfield, C., Morris, P. A., Shaw, D. S., Cates, C. B., & Mendelshon, A. L. (2019). Sociodemographic and psychosocial predictors of VIP attendance in Smart Beginnings through 6 months: effectively targeting at-risk mothers in early visits. Prevention Science, 21(1), 120–130.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mischel, W., Ayduk, O., Berman, M. G., Casey, B. J., Gotlib, I. H., Jonides, J., Kross, E., Wilson, N., Zayas, V., & Shoda, Y. (2011). “Willpower” over the life span: decomposing self-regulation. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 6(2), 252–256.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mullainathan, S., & Shafir, E. (2009). Savings policy and decisionmaking in low-income households. In B. Michael & B. Rebecca (Eds.), Insufficient funds: savings, assets, credit and banking among low-income households (pp. 121–145). Russell Sage Foundation Press.

  • Mullainathan, S., & Shafir, E. (2010). Decisions under scarcity. Russell Sage Foundation Summer Institute for Behavioral Economics, Trento, July.

  • Mullainathan, S., & Shafir, E. (2013). Scarcity: why having too little means so much. Time Books, Henry Holt and Co.

  • Raikes, H., Pan, B. A., Luze, G., Tamis-LeMonda, C. S., Brooks-Gunn, J., Constantine, J., Tarullo, L. B., Raikes, H. A., & Rodrigues, E. T. (2006). Mother-child bookreading in low-income families: correlates and outcomes during the first three years of life. Child Development, 77, 924–953.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Romeo, R. R., Segaran, J., Leonard, J. A., Robinson, S. T., West, M. R., Mackey, A. P., Yendiki, A., Rowe, M. L., & Gabrieli, J. D. E. (2018). Language exposure relates to structural neural connectivity in childhood. Journal of Neuroscience, 38(36), 7870–7877.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rowe, M. L. (2012). A longitudinal investigation of the role of quantity and quality of child-directed speech in vocabulary development. Child Development, 83(5), 1762–1774.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shah, A., Mullainathan, S., & Shafir, E. (2012). Some consequences of having too little. Science, 338, 682–685.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shimpi, P. M., Fedewa, A., & Hans, S. (2012). Social and linguistic input in low-income African American mother–child dyads from 1 month through 2 years: relations to vocabulary development. Applied Psycholinguistics, 33(4), 781–798.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Spears, D. (2011). Economic decision-making in poverty depletes behavioral control. The BE Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, 11, 1–42.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sunstein, C. R. (2017). Misconceptions about nudges. https://ssrn.com/abstract=3033101 or https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3033101.

  • Suskind, D. (2015). Thirty million words: building a child’s brain. Penguin Random House.

  • Suskind, D., & Leffel, K. (2013). The thirty million words project: a randomized controlled pilot. University of Chicago Manuscript.

  • Talking is Teaching (2016). Talking is teaching: talk, read, sing campaigns. http://talkingisteaching.org/talking-is-teaching-campaigns.

  • Thaler, R. H., & Sunstein, C. R. (2008). Nudge: improving decisions about health, wealth, and happiness. Penguin Group.

  • Tufts Interdisciplinary Evaluation Research. (2015). The Massachusetts Healthy Families Evaluation-2 (MHFE-2): a randomized controlled trial of a statewide home visiting program for young parents. Final report to the Children’s Trust of Massachusetts.

  • Weisleder, A., & Fernald, A. (2013). Talking to children matters: early language experience strengthens processing and builds vocabulary. Psychological Science, 24(11), 2143–2152.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Whittaker, K. A., & Cowley, S. (2012). An effective programme is not enough: a review of factors associated with poor attendance and engagement with parenting support programmes. Children & Society, 26(2), 138–149.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Winslow, E., Bonds, D. B., Wolchik, S., Sandler, I., & Braver, S. (2009). Predictors of enrollment and retention in a preventive parenting intervention for divorced families. The Journal of Primary Prevention, 30(2), 151–172.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yarosz, D. J., & Barnett, W. S. (2001). Who reads to young children?: identifying predictors of family reading activities. Reading Psychology, 22(1), 67–81.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Bezos Family Foundation and the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development R03 HD090280. We are enormously grateful to the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene Newborn Home Visiting Program Harlem Team for their support of this research and recruiting participants for the study; and, the families for their willingness to participate.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Duke University Sanford School of Public Policy, 212 Rubenstein Hall, 302 Towerview Road, Durham, NC, 27708, USA

    Lisa A. Gennetian

  2. New York University, 246 Greene Street, Floor 5E, New York, NY, 10003, USA

    Lerzan Z. Coskun, Joy L. Kennedy & J. Lawrence Aber

  3. Brooklyn College, 2900 Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn, NY, 11210, USA

    Yana Kuchirko

Authors
  1. Lisa A. Gennetian
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Lerzan Z. Coskun
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Joy L. Kennedy
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Yana Kuchirko
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. J. Lawrence Aber
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Lisa A. Gennetian.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical Approval

This study was approved by the New York University’s Institutional Review Board following an Expedited Review at 45 CFR 46 110(b)[1] Category 7. All procedures performed in this study involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Informed consent was obtained from all participants included in this study.

Additional information

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Gennetian, L.A., Coskun, L.Z., Kennedy, J.L. et al. The Impact of Default Options for Parent Participation in an Early Language Intervention. J Child Fam Stud 29, 3565–3574 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-020-01838-7

Download citation

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-020-01838-7

Keywords

  • Early childhood programming
  • Language development
  • Socioeconomic disparities
  • Parent engagement
  • Default options