A 7-week summer text-message nudge campaign increased fall reenrollment among first-year community college students by 7 percentage points relative to control¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · causal r2 · q3
Currency · newest study 2019 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q3 i? Assignment to the nudge intervention improved fall reenrollment by 7 percentage points over a control rate of 62% in an intent-to-treat randomized controlled trial. → Ross E. O'Hara 2019

Evidence¶

Ross E. O'Hara 2019¶

Ross E. O'Hara, Betsy Sparrow. (2019). A Summer Nudge Campaign to Motivate Community College STEM Students to Reenroll. AERA Open. https://doi.org/10.1177/2332858419875715

q3 · i? · causal · r2

Randomized controlled trial with 2,759 first-year students at three U.S. community colleges randomly assigned via Excel's RAND function; intent-to-treat linear probability and logit models on registrar reenrollment data. The printed treatment effect was 0.072** (OR 1.38), described as improving reenrollment "by 7 percentage points compared with the control group rate of 62%."

"We first examined the impact of assignment to the treatment group relative to the control group on retention and observed that receiving nudges improved reenrollment by 7 percentage points compared with the control group rate of 62%."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Treatment-effect heterogeneity by engagement: first-day unsubscribers reenrolled 26 percentage points below control, while full-treatment students benefited whether or not they responded — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
• The nudge intervention raised reenrollment by 10 percentage points among STEM-pathway students but had no significant effect on non-STEM students — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
• The nudge intervention raised reenrollment by 10 percentage points among summer-enrolled students but not significantly among students not enrolled in summer courses — related
• Summer-enrolled treatment students engaged more with the nudges than non-summer-enrolled students, while STEM and non-STEM students engaged similarly — related
• Three of the five reviewed RCTs found no statistically significant effect of summer counseling on fall college enrollment (indeterminate effects) — related
• Text-message college transition messaging did not increase college persistence among GEAR UP students — related
• Text-message college transition messaging did not increase college enrollment in the fall after high school graduation among GEAR UP students — related
• Summer counseling produces a small but statistically significant positive effect on credit accumulation and persistence (WWC rating: potentially positive effects) — related