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Discrimination by Politicians: Evidence from the UK

Last registered on February 24, 2019

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Discrimination by Politicians: Evidence from the UK
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0003876
Initial registration date
February 11, 2019

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
February 24, 2019, 7:50 PM EST

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

Primary Investigator

Affiliation

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Affiliation
LSE

Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2019-02-18
End date
2019-09-19
Secondary IDs
Abstract
We conduct an audit study to explore bias by politicians on the basis of the religion of constituents.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Crawfurd, Lee and Ukasha Ramli. 2019. "Discrimination by Politicians: Evidence from the UK." AEA RCT Registry. February 24. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.3876-1.0
Former Citation
Crawfurd, Lee and Ukasha Ramli. 2019. "Discrimination by Politicians: Evidence from the UK." AEA RCT Registry. February 24. https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/3876/history/42048
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Intervention Start Date
2019-02-18
Intervention End Date
2019-02-28

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
The response rate, response time, and cordiality of responses, by political party.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
The response rate will be the proportion of emails that are answered. Response time will be average time to response, conditional on response. Cordiality is a dummy indicator for whether the response includes a salutation such as "Dear... ".

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
Each recipient is randomised to receive a different treatment or control condition.
Experimental Design Details
Each local politician is randomly assigned to receive an email from one of 6 treatment names (3 religions, 2 sexes) and one of two email scripts. In effect the Jewish and Muslim -sounding names are treatments and a Christian-sounding name is the control group. One of the email scripts in non-descript, whereas the other explicitly mentions the emailer's religion.
Randomization Method
In office by computer
Randomization Unit
Individual politician
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
400 councils
Sample size: planned number of observations
10,000 politicians
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
3,422 politicians receive an email from a Muslim, the same from a Jew, and the same from a Christian.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
The MDE is .0581 for the two main political parties.
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
IRB Approval Date
IRB Approval Number

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
No
Data Collection Complete
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials