Perceived Helpfulness and Adoption Intentions for Real-Time Attendance Text Notifications: Insights from School Stakeholders

Abstract

Students who miss school regularly are more likely to fall behind in coursework, disengage from learning, and experience longer-term educational difficulties (Attendance Works, 2015). Chronic absenteeism remains a persistent barrier to student success (Gottfried, 2014), creating a need for timely, accessible, and actionable communication between schools and families. Real-time attendance text notifications represent one such approach, offering schools a way to inform parents and guardians immediately when a student is absent and potentially enabling earlier intervention. This pilot study examined school stakeholders’ perceptions of a real-time attendance text-messaging system designed to notify users when a student is absent. The study involved 43 participants who volunteered to participate in a six-month intervention. Each participant was assigned a fictitious child within the system and received real-time absence notifications intended to simulate an authentic school-to-home communication process. Participants included parents/guardians, educators, and administrators from Maryland public schools. At the conclusion of the intervention, participants completed a structured post-use interview or survey based on their experience with the system.The study focused on three research questions: how school stakeholders perceived the helpfulness of real-time attendance text notifications, whether they believed the notifications would prompt immediate action, and whether they believed the system could help reduce absenteeism. Findings suggest that participants responded positively across all three areas. Most participants viewed the notifications as helpful and valuable, believed that receiving a text message shortly after an absence would encourage immediate action, and agreed that a technology-based system could help reduce absenteeism. These findings provide preliminary evidence that real-time text notifications may serve as a practical, user-friendly communication tool to strengthen school-family engagement and support early attendance intervention.

Keywords: Absenteeism, Communication, Attendance, Notification, Perception, Stakeholders

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1008141