Educational research · Digital experience · Path analysis
Digital education and parent–school trust
How do parents find and evaluate educational information, and how does their experience of digital services relate to trust in schools? Research with Moscow City University: a large parent survey in 2023 and a published analytical article in 2026.
The study
A survey, and what to do with it.
The wider project combined in-depth interviews with a large online survey of Moscow parents. It covered information needs, communication difficulties, digital-resource use and perceptions of the education system.
My contribution
I was a member of the research team and a co-author of the project booklet. My own analytical work is in the first-authored article When Trust Is at Risk, written with Elena Nekhorosheva and Daria Kasatkina, which examines school-interaction difficulties, digital experience and parental trust.
Analytical approach
The article built and checked scales, then developed six path models step by step. It separated awareness of digital resources, how often they were used and how satisfied parents were with them, and compared their roles in the link between difficulties and trust. That goes beyond counting who uses what.
Public attribution: Moscow City University research team, with Ekaterina Enchikova affiliated to the University of Porto in the article.
Parent journeys
Information access was only part of the problem.
The project booklet, In Dialogue with Parents: How We Build Mutual Trust in Education (2023, team publication; English translation of the Russian title), described how parents move between digital services and people.
Digital-first
Parents who used official websites, online services, social media and chats to find information and complete educational tasks.
Hybrid
Parents who gathered basic information online, then checked it with teachers, school administrators or other parents before deciding.
Contact-led
Parents for whom personal contact stayed the decisive source, even when online search was part of the process.
Qualitative journey patterns from the booklet, not population segments with measured shares.
Where friction occurred
Parents described technical instability, unclear interfaces and instructions, fragmented information, and difficulty knowing where to send a question or complaint.
What they wanted
Clear, up-to-date information and a predictable route to the right person. Digital channels could support dialogue, but not automatically replace responsive relationships with teachers and administrators.
The booklet proposed more reliable technology, better navigation and links between official resources, clearer guidance on responsibilities and escalation routes, and more orderly ways to contact school staff.
The model
Quality of digital experience was central.
In the combined model, how satisfied parents were with digital resources carried the link from use to trust.
Combined model
Use, satisfaction and trust
What the model shows
Use frequency was positively associated with satisfaction (about 0.32), and satisfaction with trust (about 0.27). Difficulties stayed negatively associated with trust; in the baseline model the standardised association was −0.449. The direct path from frequency to trust was not significant.
Alternative explanations
Six models examined the baseline difficulties–trust relationship and different communication and digital-experience pathways. Frequency of personal contact was positively associated with trust, but the indirect path through personal communication was not significant. Satisfaction had the largest indirect association among the single-mediator models.
Measurement
Measure first, then model.
The questionnaire covered digital resources, perceptions of schools and the education system, and family characteristics. Composite measures kept awareness, use, satisfaction, communication, difficulties and trust apart.
Reliability
Cronbach’s alpha of the composite measures
Limits
What the evidence does not show.
Stated up front, so the results are read as associations, not as proof of effects.
- The data are self-reported and cross-sectional, so findings are associations. They do not show that digital tools cause trust to recover.
- The sample was 94% women and 77% university-educated, so it should not be treated as representative of all parents.
- Digital resources were aggregated, so the contribution of each platform cannot be separated.
- The booklet’s journey patterns are qualitative and carry no measured shares.
Publication: Enchikova, E. S., Nekhorosheva, E. V., & Kasatkina, D. A. (2026). When Trust Is at Risk: How Digital Resources Help Parents Stay Connected to Schools. Educational Studies Moscow, 1, 67–95. Original in Russian. doi.org/10.17323/vo-2026-26880
Conference talk: 16th Conference of the European Sociological Association, Porto, August 2024. Slides, PDF ↗
Where it sits in the method: Stage 04 · Analyse