Multilingual Parents' Experiences of an Early Language and Literacy Intervention: A Qualitative Study Using the Behaviour Change Wheel.

Parents were recruited by the same language starter who had visited them, so families who were unhappy or who had dropped out are likely to be missing. The authors acknowledge that opposing views may be under-represented. Nothing was measured and no behaviour was observed. Every reported change is what a parent said in an interview, with a service-connected researcher, so some answers may have been shaped by wanting to say something favourable. The gap between the last visit and the interview ranged from about one month to three years, so some parents were recalling events from well over a year earlier. Everyone came from one small rural municipality and had taken part in at least one visit. Parents who declined, never engaged, or lived elsewhere are not represented. Participants' Swedish was never formally assessed, and 11 of the 15 chose to be interviewed in Swedish, so those with the least Swedish may still be under-represented even though interpreters were offered. The mapping onto the Behaviour Change Wheel was the authors' own interpretive exercise rather than a standard procedure, and they call it exploratory; it describes possible processes, not ones that were tested. During COVID-19 the programme reached fewer families, particularly those with a first language other than Swedish, which the authors say may have affected who was available to take part.

The authors declare no conflicts of interest. The study was funded by Region Halland, the Swedish region that runs Språkstart Halland. The authors state the funder had no role in the study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation or the decision to publish.

Do not read this as evidence that the programme works. Nothing about what parents or children actually did was measured. The findings are what 15 parents said in interviews, and every one of them was recruited by the same 'language starter' who had visited their home, so parents with a poor experience are the ones most likely to be missing.