Boosting study habits with high-frequency information: A field experiment to aid disadvantaged students

Publication Type

Working Paper

Publication Date

2-2025

Abstract

Extended school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted students’ study habits and routine educational engagement, especially in low-income settings where distance education often fails to reach disadvantaged populations. We use a field experiment in rural Bangladesh to determine whether increasing parental engagement can mitigate these disruptions, particularly in the post-pandemic recovery stage. Our findings reveal that a high-frequency information intervention— delivered through weekly text messages and automated voice calls—significantly increases parents’ awareness and children’s self-study hours, particularly in households lacking access to technology. By disseminating information on available learning resources, teachers’ contact details, and the benefits of education, the intervention boosts daily self-study hours by 15 percent. Although Bangladesh’s simplified post-pandemic school promotion and shortened syllabus constrained our ability to measure academic improvements, the intervention narrowed study-hour inequalities, promoting upward mobility (and reducing downward mobility) among households without technology access. Shapley-value decomposition analyses indicate that 5-20 percent of the reduced inequality is attributable to the direct treatment effect. Better parental involvement—encouraging children to use learning resources and more household investment in private tutoring—appears to be an important causal channel. Our findings underscore the potential of scalable, low-cost, parentfocused programs to bolster learning continuity under adverse conditions — particularly important for low- and middle-income countries.

Keywords

high-frequency information, study hours, post-pandemic recovery

Discipline

Educational Assessment, Evaluation, and Research

First Page

1

Last Page

49

Additional URL

https://economics.fiu.edu/research/working-papers/2025/2501.pdf

This document is currently not available here.

Share

COinS