Evidence‐Based Message Strategies to Increase Public Support for State Investment in Early Childhood Education: Results from a Longitudinal Panel Experiment

Abstract

Investments in early childhood education can have long‐lasting influence on health and well‐being at later stages of the life course. Widespread public support and strategies to counter opposition will be critical to the future political feasibility of enhancing early childhood policies and programs. Simple advocacy messages emphasizing the need for affordable, accessible, high‐quality childcare for all can increase public support for state investments in these policies. Policy narratives (short stories with a setting, characters, and a plot that unfolds over time and offers a policy solution to a social problem) that describe structural barriers to childcare and policy solutions to address these barriers may be particularly effective to persuade individuals inclined to oppose such policies to become supportive. Inoculation messages (messages designed to prepare audiences for encountering and building resistance to opposing messages) may protect favorable childcare policy attitudes in the face of oppositional messaging. Context Early childhood education (ECE) programs enhance the health and social well‐being of children and families. This preregistered, randomized, controlled study tested the effectiveness of communication strategies to increase public support for state investments in affordable, accessible, and high‐quality childcare for all. Methods At time 1 (August‐September 2019), we randomly assigned members of an online research panel (n = 4,363) to read one of four messages promoting state investment in childcare policies and programs, or to a no‐exposure control group. Messages included an argument‐based message (“simple pro‐policy”), a message preparing audiences for encountering and building resistance to opposing messages (“inoculation”), a story illustrating the structural nature of the problem and solution (“narrative”), and both inoculation and narrative messages (“combined”). At time 2 (two weeks later) a subset of respondents (n = 1,436) read an oppositional anti‐policy message and, in two conditions, another narrative or inoculation message. Ordinary least squares regression compared groups’ levels of support for state investment in childcare policies and programs. Findings As hypothesized, respondents who read the narrative message had higher support for state investment in childcare policies than those who read the inoculation message or those in the no‐exposure control group at time 1. Among respondents who were initially opposed to such investments, those who read the narrative had greater support than respondents who read the simple pro‐policy message. Those who received the inoculation message at time 2 were more resistant to the anti‐policy message than respondents who did not receive such a message, but effects from exposures to strategic messages at time 1 did not persist at follow‐up. Conclusions Results offer guidance for policy advocates seeking to increase public support for early childhood policies and programs and could inform broader efforts to promote high‐value poli...

Partisan differences in the effects of economic evidence and local data on legislator engagement with dissemination materials about behavioral health: a dissemination trial

“…Information about the demographic characteristics of legislators was obtained from the KnowWho database and served as covariates. Political party affiliation was operationalized as Republican or non-Republican (with non-Republicans hereafter referred to as Democrats because registered Democrats comprise over 98% of legislators in this category and consistent with how political party has been operationalized in prior work [ 15 , 51 ]), gender was operationalized as male or female because this is a binary variable in the KnowWho database, and race/ethnicity was operationalized as non-Hispanic White (yes/no) to maximize statistical power. We also used KnowWho data to characterize each legislator according to whether they had a professional background in healthcare (yes/no).…”

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News Media Coverage of Childcare: How U.S. Local TV News Framed the Problem Before and During the Early Stage of the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…al, 2021 ). The higher percentage of exemplars in ECE coverage suggests that ECE-related issues could be conducive to the narrative-based frameworks that could be used in ECE policy advocacy (Niederdeppe et al, 2021 ).…”

“…Stating it most directly, Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson described his opposition to government support for childcare in January 2022: “I’ve never really felt it was society’s responsibility to take care of other people’s children” (Linfante, 2022 ). Despite the bluntness of these most recent federal debates, these conflicts are not new; as Niederdeppe and colleagues ( 2021 ) stated: “opposition to accessible and affordable childcare for all—which is often tied to political partisanship and emphasizes themes of family autonomy, parental responsibility, and opposition to government investment in social issues—has emerged in both historical and recent ECE-related policy discussions,” (Niederdeppe et al, 2021 ).…”

The Perils of Medicalization for Population Health and Health Equity

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