Is support for gender equality policy stigmatized?

Last registered on January 23, 2023
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Is support for gender equality policy stigmatized?
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0010779
Initial registration date
January 16, 2023

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
January 23, 2023, 6:39 AM EST

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

Locations

Country
United States of America
Region

Primary Investigator

Name
Leonardo Bursztyn
Affiliation
University of Chicago
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Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Alexander Cappelen
PI Affiliation
Norwegian School of Economics
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PI Name
Bertil Tungodden
PI Affiliation
Norwegian School of Economics
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PI Name
Alessandra Voena
PI Affiliation
Stanford University
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PI Name
David Yanagizawa-Drott
PI Affiliation
University of Zurich
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Additional Trial Information

Status
Completed
Start date
2023-01-17
End date
2023-01-23
Keywords
Gender
Additional Keywords
JEL code(s)
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
What people perceive as the norms or attitudes in society affects important behavior. The authors document misperceptions about gender norms with nationally representative data, covering 80% of the world population. Do people feel compelled to answer in a certain way when asked about gender norms? This trial seeks to address this concern.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Bursztyn, Leonardo et al. 2023. "Is support for gender equality policy stigmatized?." AEA RCT Registry. January 23. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.10779-1.0
Sponsors & Partners
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Half of the participants will be asked directly about a policy issue. We will elicit the opinion of the other half of the participants through a mechanism that gives them plausible deniability.
Intervention Start Date
2023-01-17
Intervention End Date
2023-01-23

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Share of participants in favor/against a policy
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
In each of our treatment groups, we are interested in the share of subjects that support a policy issue

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
We will recruit subjects living in the United States. We will randomly assign subjects to two groups.
The first group will be asked directly whether or not they agree with a gender equality policy. The second group will be asked in a way that guarantees them plausible deniability, that is, via what is known as a "randomized response"-technique.
Experimental Design Details
Our partner company Prolific will recruit participants currently residing in the United States. Our sample will include 50% women and 50% men. The subjects complete an online survey created with the software Qualtrics. We will pool data from a pilot study with identical wording and a sample size of N=400, which we can show separately in robustness regressions. In total, we will have a sample size of N=1000.

- The first group will be asked whether they agree or disagree with the following statement: "In my opinion, the government and companies should give priority to women when hiring for leadership positions."
- The second group will be asked to take a dice roll into account when answering our question. We provide a link to an external website and tell the subjects to roll the dice once. If they roll a 1 (or a 6) we ask them to indicate that they disagree (agree), regardless of their actual private opinion. If they roll a 2, 3, 4, or 5, we ask them to indicate their true opinion. Just like the first group, we are interested in whether or not they agree with the above statement. This technique is also known under the term randomized response technique.

We hypothesize that supporting affirmative action is not stigmatized. That is, we expect that the randomized response technique (which is designed to elicit true attitudes for potentially stigmatized issues) fails to deliver statistically significantly different estimates of the share of support among participants from the technique where one directly asks subjects about their opinion.
Randomization Method
Randomization will be done using our survey software Qualtrics.
Randomization Unit
Randomization will be conducted at the individual level.
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
1000 individuals
Sample size: planned number of observations
1000 individuals
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
500 individuals for direct questioning; 500 individuals with randomized response technique
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Social and Behavioral Sciences Institutional Review Board at the University of Chicago
IRB Approval Date
2022-09-19
IRB Approval Number
IRB22-1356
Analysis Plan

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