Discover our latest features and user experiences – ParentText now includes an incentives component, and we’ve launched a new chatbot focused on water, sanitation, and hygiene content.
ParentText for 5 Day RCT – In South Africa in July 2024, Parenting for Lifelong Health (PLH) deployed the ParentText 5 Day UX under the GPI within a randomised control trial (RCT) to explore its impact as a digital-only intervention, without facilitator support.
The ParentText 5 Day curriculum was originally developed with UNICEF in Mexico and then adapted for the South African context. It introduces five core parenting concepts in the first five days: relationship building, giving praise, taking a pause, setting routines, and talking about feelings, with an emphasis on spending five minutes of One-on-One Time with your child. Completing these lessons earns a Positive Parenting Certificate and helps improve parent-child relationships while allowing parents to customise their learning paths.
The chatbot offers surveys, quizzes, comics, tips, and home assignments in text, audio, or AI video, personalised to the user’s profile, including the child’s age and caregiver’s gender.
Research incentives – Typically, research surveys are delivered via data collectors, but the ParentText 5 Day RCT is delivering all three surveys through the chatbot. To incentivise participation in the surveys, airtime incentives are offered at baseline (ZAR 25), 30 days (ZAR 50) and 90 (ZAR 75) days follow-up. IDEMS International, our technology partner, integrated RapidPro with a digital micropayment platform enabling forwarding of phone credits based on a user experience map.
Randomisation of ParentText user flow – Upon completing the baseline survey, users are randomised into one of three user experiences: WASHText, ParentText, or ParentText with a booster module focused on parent engagement in child development. The randomisation algorithm employed equally distributes parent gender, child gender, as well as the child’s age group (2 to 10 and 11 to 17) within the three arms of the RCT.
Inclusive approach – Participants who do not wish to participate in the formal study are still invited to receive ParentText for a five day experience.
WASHText – PLH also celebrates the launch of WASHText in July 2024, a content package built on the same user experience as ParentText but with information for improved water, sanitation and hygiene. WASHText was borne out of WASHApp and functions as the control experience in the ParentText 5 Day RCT. Designed to also provide content over a 5 day period, parents and caregivers receive messages regarding Healthy Homes, Healthy Families, Handwashing, Safe Food and Water, Clean Toilets and Managing Rubbish.
