Text-message based parenting programs have proven successful in improving parental engagement and preschoolers' literacy development. This study seeks to identify mechanisms of the overall effect of such programs. It investigates whether actionable advice alone drives previous study's results and whether additional texts of actionable advice improve program effectiveness. The findings provide evidence that text messaging programs can supply too little or too much information. A single text per week is not as effective at improving parenting practices as a set of three texts that also include information and encouragement, but a set of five texts with additional actionable advice is also not as effective as the three-text approach. The results on children's literacy development depend on the child's pre-intervention literacy skills. For children in the lowest quarter of the pre-treatment literacy assessments, providing one example of an activity improves literacy scores by 0.19 standard deviations less than providing three texts. Literacy scores of children in higher quarters are marginally higher with only one tip per week than with three. We find no positive effects of increasing to five texts per week.

中文翻译：

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太少或太多？幼儿短信实验中的可行建议

实践证明，基于短信的育儿计划可以成功地改善父母的参与度和学龄前儿童的识字能力。这项研究试图确定这种方案的整体效果的机制。它调查了仅可采取行动的建议是否能推动以前的研究结果，以及是否可以采取行动的建议的其他案文提高了计划的有效性。这些发现提供了证据，表明短信程序可以提供的信息太少或太多。每周只有一本教科书在改善育儿习惯方面不如一套包含信息和鼓励的三本教科书有效，但是，一套包含额外的可行建议的五本教科书也不如三文教科书那样有效。儿童读写能力发展的结果取决于儿童的干预前读写能力。对于治疗前识字率最低的四分之一的儿童，提供一项活动的例子比提供三篇课文可将识字分数提高0.19个标准差。高四分之一儿童的识字分数每周只有一个小费，比三个孩子的小。我们发现每周增加五个文本不会带来积极影响。