There are, however, admitted limits to the study. Firstly, the sampling size was relatively small and from a homogeneous population. There may also be correlational factors that affect the result which do not reflect the causation of higher rates of student literacy who text. Students who are highly plugged in to Internet technology, for example, may be more affluent and thus more apt to have advanced technology which enhances texting -- and also to more educational resources which enable the students to effectively distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate contexts for texting. Improved but more expensive smartphones that have grown more common in the past years may be a particularly important component of the degree to which affluence affects enhanced used of texting. The fact that students who cannot distinguish between appropriate contexts to use textese have poorer literacy skills does not seem surprising.

One way to examine the degree to which socioeconomic factors are related to literacy would have been to compare literacy rates of students of various income levels and backgrounds from the pre-texting...

It would also be interesting to explore certain students from specific demographics and disadvantaged educational backgrounds have more difficulty understanding when it is appropriate to use textese.
An admitted problem with the study is that the frequency of texting was self-reported. Students with lower levels of literacy might be less conscious and thus less accurate in reporting how frequently they text. This is a particularly important consideration given the degree to which the researchers prioritized 'mindful' content-sensitive texting as an important distinguisher between correct and incorrect use of 'textese.' Ideally, in the future, researchers would have access to student cellphone and computer records to determine exactly how much the study participants did text, versus notoriously unreliable self-reported data.

Reference

Drouin, M.A. (2011). College students' text messaging, use of textese and literacy skills.

Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 27, 67 -- 75.