Dear Parents or Guardians:
The University of New Mexico (UNM), along with collaborators from the Central Region Educational Cooperative (CREC), the RAND Corporation, and Stanford University, are conducting a study of TipsByText in your area. TipsByText (TbT) is a text messaging curriculum for parents of prekindergarten (PreK)-aged students. TbT delivers parents Tips about how to prepare children for kindergarten, Facts about how to engage in school readiness activities with their children, and Encouragement for parents to do these school readiness activities with their children. TbT has been found to improve school readiness of children in urban areas. By doing this study, we hope to learn if TbT can improve the school readiness of children in rural areas.
If you choose to participate you will be one of approximately 2,200 families across New Mexico in the study. Half of the families will receive TbT while the other half will receive text messages with general information about kindergarten. This will allow us to measure if Tips by Text better prepares children for kindergarten. Before receiving text messages you will be asked to complete two surveys (you will receive a $25 merchandise card for each survey). For a ten-month period you will receive text messages and be asked to complete brief (5 minutes or less) monthly surveys (you will be receive a $10 merchandise card for each monthly survey). Before your child begins kindergarten you will be asked to complete one final survey (you will receive a $25 merchandise card for this survey). The total amount of time you will be asked to volunteer for this study is approximately 10 minutes per week over the next school year. CREC staff will then meet with your child during school hours at the beginning of kindergarten to see if TbT helped prepare them for school. The New Mexico Public Education Department will also share information with us about educational assessments they administer to all students in the state in the coming years.
TbT presents only minimal risk to participants. Families will receive three or fewer text messages each week, which could be considered an inconvenience to some. Past studies of TbT have shown increased school readiness for participants. Families can opt out of the texts at any time. You will not lose any services, benefits, or rights you would normally have if you do not want to participate. The sole purpose of collecting the information is to study whether using TbT improves school readiness. UNM will use the information only for research purposes and keep it strictly confidential. We will not release it to anyone outside the project, unless required to by law. We will remove names from the information when we are analyzing it. When we report results, we will combine information from many students together, so no individual’s information will be revealed. At the end of the study we will destroy all information that identifies your child.
The person in charge of this study is Dr. Rebecca Kilburn of the UNM Health Sciences Center (HSC), Department of Pediatrics, Prevention Research Center. If you have questions, suggestions, or concerns regarding this study or you want to withdraw from the study, her contact information is mkilburn@salud.unm.edu or (505) 272-4859 (voice only phone).
If you have any questions or concerns about your rights as a volunteer in this research, contact staff in the UNM HSC Human Research Review Committee (between the business hours of 8AM and 5PM, Mountain Standard Time, Monday-Friday at 505-272-1129.
Sincerely,
Rebecca Kilburn, Ph.D.
Principal Investigator, UNM Prevention Research Center
HRRC-ID # 23-049