Text Messaging in Research: A Playbook for Study Teams

A free resource from Mosio for principal investigators and research coordinators who want to use text messaging to improve participant engagement, streamline study operations, and stay compliant.

If you have ever sent a study reminder via email and watched it go unanswered, or left a voicemail for a participant who never called back, you already understand the problem text messaging solves in research.

Participants carry their phones everywhere. They read text messages within minutes. They respond to texts at rates that email and phone simply cannot match. For research teams trying to keep participants engaged across weeks, months, or years of a study, text messaging is one of the most effective communication tools available.

But getting it right takes more than picking a platform and sending messages. There are compliance requirements that many teams do not anticipate, carrier rules that have changed significantly in recent years, and operational decisions that, if made poorly at the start, create problems mid-study when there is no good time to fix them.

That is why we built the "Text Messaging in Research: A Playbook for Study Teams."

What Is the Playbook?

The playbook is a free, 20-tip guide for research teams who are adding text messaging to their study communications for the first time, or who want to make sure their existing setup is built on solid ground.

It is organized into four sections that follow the natural arc of a study:

Before You Start covers the planning work that prevents most common mistakes: documenting your communication requirements, preparing your IRB submission, budgeting for delays, and deciding how your team will handle incoming messages.

Compliance and Carrier Rules addresses the two parallel compliance frameworks every research team needs to understand. HIPAA governs how you store and protect participant data. Carrier compliance governs what you can send and under what conditions. Both matter, and they are not the same thing. This section walks through 10DLC registration, opt-in and opt-out requirements, and what to look for in a vendor to make sure you are covered on both fronts.

Message Design and Delivery focuses on the craft of writing text messages that participants actually read and respond to. Topics include time zone awareness for multi-site studies, personalizing messages with custom fields, choosing between in-text SMS surveys and external survey links, and the case for writing and reviewing message templates as a team before launch.

Study Operations and Engagement covers the practical mechanics of running a text messaging program across the life of a study: welcoming participants at enrollment, building automated message sequences for longitudinal studies, using text surveys for compliance confirmation and data collection, and creating a re-engagement protocol for participants at risk of going silent.

Who Is It For?

The playbook is written for principal investigators and research coordinators at universities, cancer centers, academic medical centers, and research hospitals. It assumes no prior experience with text messaging platforms and does not require a technical background to follow.

It is also useful for study operations teams evaluating platforms for the first time. The compliance and vendor evaluation sections give you specific questions to ask and red flags to watch for, so you can assess your options with confidence.

Why Mosio Built This

We have been working with research teams since 2009. In that time we have seen the same questions come up again and again, from teams at institutions of every size: What do I tell the IRB? What is 10DLC and do I need it? Should I use a survey link or ask questions directly in the text thread? What happens when a participant texts STOP?

The playbook is our attempt to answer all of those questions in one place, in plain language, without assuming you have a compliance officer on call or an IT department standing by.

Text messaging works exceptionally well in research when it is set up correctly. We want every team that is considering it to have the information they need to do exactly that.

⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️ Download the Playbook ⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️

The "Text Messaging in Research: A Playbook for Study Teams" is available as a free PDF download. No prior experience with text messaging platforms required.

If you have questions after reading it, our team hosts regular virtual office hours where you can ask questions, see the platform in action, and get guidance specific to your study.