"Behavioral Economics and Parent Participation in an Evidence-Based Parenting Program at Scale"

​Third-year doctoral student Michelle Spiegel is second author of an article in Prevention Science analyzing the role of parent participation programs in supporting children’s health and development.
 
The title of the article is “Behavioral Economics and Parent Participation in an Evidence-Based Parenting Program at Scale.”
 
Co-authors are Research Scientist Zolene Hill (New York Academy of Medicine, first author), Associate Professor Lisa Gennetian (Duke University), ParentCorps Program Manager Kai-Ama Hamer (NYU Grossman School of Medicine), Professor Laurie Brotman (NYU Grossman School of Medicine), and Assistant Professor Spring Dawson-McClure (NYU Grossman School of Medicine).
 
Spiegel’s research focuses on education inequality and removing barriers to high quality education during early and middle childhood. Her professional experience includes direct service work, both as a teacher and a case manager, in low-income communities domestic and abroad. She earned a B.A. in Psychology from the University of Michigan and Master’s in Public Administration from NYU. At NYU she worked in a research lab housed at NYU focusing on parent engagement and early childhood programming amongst low-income New Yorkers.

Michelle Spiegel

​Abstract
 
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.