Using a Factorial Design to Maximize the Effectiveness of a Parental Text Messaging Intervention

This study investigates how the design and content of parental text messages influence family engagement and student reading outcomes by using a large-scale factorial experiment to isolate the effects of individual message components and their combinations. Conducted with more than 5,000 elementary students, the intervention tested three key features of summer reading text messages: (1) providing personalized, up-to-date information about a child’s reading activity, (2) framing reading as skill-building, entertainment, or both, and (3) offering opportunities for goal setting. The findings show that personalized messages consistently increased parental engagement with a reading app and led to small but statistically significant improvements in students’ fall reading scores. While goal-setting and reading-framing alone had limited effects, combining personalization with messages that emphasized both the enjoyment and skill-building value of reading amplified impacts on student outcomes. The study demonstrates that not all text messages are equally effective—and that poorly designed messages can be less effective than sending no messages at all—highlighting the importance of content, framing, and interaction effects when scaling low-cost family engagement interventions.