Preventing violence against children Title: Breaking barriers to scale up: Maximizing retention and engagement of a self-led parenting app

每年有超过10亿儿童成为虐待的受害者。虽然育儿规划在减少暴力和改善儿童结局方面的潜力得到广泛承认，但获得有效育儿支助的机会仍然很少。下一步是制定战略，扩大养育方案，特别是在虐待率最高的非洲。移动技术和机器学习的迅速发展为增加访问、个性化内容和为大规模传播提供可持续的解决方案提供了巨大的潜力。牛津大学与世界卫生组织、联合国儿童基金会以及南非、肯尼亚和尼日利亚政府合作，正在将一项基于证据的育儿计划——终身健康青少年育儿（PLH-Teen）——改编为移动应用程序版本。该应用程序将在南非、肯尼亚和尼日利亚的一项在线随机对照试验（n = 36000）中进行严格测试。虽然该应用程序有潜力支持数百万家庭，但需要进一步研究，以制定有效的保留和参与策略，以确保尽可能多的家庭受益。这一点尤其重要，因为人员流失和低参与度消耗了稀缺资源，并削弱了干预措施的影响、覆盖面和可持续性。我提议的研究利用即将推出的育儿应用程序，为有效的参与和留存策略提供信息，首先，通过确定与参与度和留存率变化相关的因素，其次，通过探索更高的参与度是否与积极的结果相关，第三，通过调查参与度影响与变化相关的潜在途径的方式。了解这些对参与和变革机制的影响，将为改善受暴力影响家庭的吸收和参与提供解决办法。在此过程中，该研究将为政策制定者和从业者提供更好地规划和实施数字育儿方案的工具。虽然这项研究旨在减少对儿童的暴力行为，但其结果也将对那些寻求提供任何其他数字社会项目的人感兴趣。因此，我提出的研究不仅在非洲和预防暴力方面有重大的政策贡献，而且在实施科学和移动保健技术领域也有重大的政策贡献。

Over one billion children are victims of abuse each year. While the potential for parenting programmes to reduce violence and improve children's outcomes is widely recognised, access to effective parenting support remains scarce. The next step is to develop strategies to scale-up parenting programmes, especially in Africa where rates of abuse are highest. The dramatic growth of mobile technology and Machine Learning offer major potential to increase access, personalise content and provide sustainable solutions to wide-scale dissemination.Oxford University in collaboration with the World Health Organization, UNICEF and the South African, Kenyan, and Nigerian governments is adapting an evidence-based parenting programme - Parenting for Lifelong Health Teen (PLH-Teen) - for mobile-app version. The app will berigorously tested in an online randomised controlled trial (n = 36 000) in South Africa, Kenya, and Nigeria. While the app has the potential to support millions of families, further research is needed to inform effective retention and engagement strategies to ensure that as many families as possible benefit. This is particularly important as attrition and low engagement consumes scarce resources and diminishes impact, reach and sustainability of interventions.My proposed research capitalises on the forthcoming parenting app to inform effective participation and retention strategies, firstly, by determining the factors associated with variation in engagement and retention, secondly, by exploring whether higher engagement is associated with positive outcomes, and thirdly, by investigating the ways in which engagement influences the underlying pathways associated with change. Understanding these influences on participation and mechanisms of change will provide solutions to improving uptake and participation among violence-affected families. In doing so, the study will provide policy-makers and practitioners with tools to better plan and deliver digital parenting programmes.While this research seeks to reduce violence against children, the results will also be of interest for those seeking to deliver any other digital social programme. Thus, my proposed study has substantial policy contributions not only in Africa and within a violence prevention context, but also in the field of implementation science and mobile-health technologies.