Developing Youth Groups in Bangladesh to Support Peers at Risk of Early Marriage

Last registered on February 21, 2023

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Developing Youth Groups in Bangladesh to Support Peers at Risk of Early Marriage
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0010936
Initial registration date
February 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
February 21, 2023, 7:00 AM EST

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

Locations

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Primary Investigator

Affiliation
University of Kent

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Affiliation
Monash University Malaysia

Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2023-04-01
End date
2025-08-31
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
The project involves the implementation and evaluation of an intervention that empowers youth groups (including both girls and boys in the age range 16-25) to tackle the problem of female early marriage within their communities through paralegal training and mentoring and supervision by experienced paralegals. The aim of the intervention is to reduce female early marriage and school dropout, and improve agency of adolescent girls and young women in Bangladesh. Compared to existing programmes, the main innovation lies in institutionalising moral agency by building paralegal capabilities through grassroots youth network development.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Asadullah, Niaz and Zaki Wahhaj. 2023. "Developing Youth Groups in Bangladesh to Support Peers at Risk of Early Marriage." AEA RCT Registry. February 21. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.10936-1.0
Sponsors & Partners

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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
The intervention aims to empower youth groups (including both girls and boys in the age range 16-25) to tackle the problem of female early marriage within their communities through paralegal training and mentoring and supervision by experienced paralegals. The aim of the intervention is to reduce female early marriage and school dropout, and improve agency of adolescent girls and young women in Bangladesh.
Intervention Start Date
2023-06-01
Intervention End Date
2025-06-01

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
schooling, marriage and childbirth
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
School enrolment, marital status, childbirth and related information will be self-reported by the intended programme beneficiaries and their guardians during the baseline and endline surveys.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
aspirations
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)
Data collection on aspirations will be based on survey questions the achievements along various dimensions (e.g. education, employment marriage, children) that respondents believe it is important for a young woman to “get by” and “live well”.

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
We will identify 100 urban wards across four districts for inclusion in the study. 50 of these will be randomly assigned to the treatment arm and the remaining 50 will be assigned to the control arm.
Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
The randomisation of treatment across the study neighbourhoods will be conducted by the Principal Investigator using computer software (STATA's built-in randomisation functions).
Randomization Unit
The unit of randomisation is an urban 'ward', the smallest administrative unit in urban Bangladesh.
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
The intervention will be conducted in low-income urban neighbourhoods, each covering an area of about 600 households, in 50 wards in four districts of Bangladesh: Dinajpur (15 wards), Dhaka (15 wards), Khulna (10 wards), Patuakhali (10 wards) (a ‘ward’ is the smallest administrative unit in urban areas of Bangladesh). 50 additional wards from the same districts will also be included in the study as controls.
Sample size: planned number of observations
The study sample will consist of 4,000 households (40 households per community x 100 communities). Using the stratified random sampling described above, we anticipate that the sample will include approximately 3,500 adolescent girls and 1,800 young women.
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
50 treatment clusters and 50 control clusters. Each cluster is a neighbourhood within an urban 'ward', the smallest administrative unit in urban Bangladesh.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
We have conducted power calculations for the key outcome variables which are shown in Figure 2 in the Analysis Plan. The figure shows the required number of treatment clusters for various effect sizes for two key outcome variables (i) probability of marriage below 18 at the end of the intervention period – 2 years – for girls aged 13-17 years at baseline; (ii) total years of schooling at the end of the intervention period for girls aged 13-17 years at baseline. For these calculations we use alpha = 0.05, power = 0.80, equal number of clusters in treatment and control arms, and obtain the intra-cluster correlations and estimates of variance from the 2014 WiLCAS (rho = 0.053 for years of schooling, and rho = 0 for probability of marriage below 18; sd = 2.4 for years of schooling). In the figure, we also show the power calculations for two alternative scenarios: (a) rho = ICC in 2014 WiLCAS + 0.01; (b) rho = ICC in 2014 WiLCAS + 0.02. As the figures show, for all scenarios considered, 50 treatment clusters are sufficient to detect an effect size of a decrease in the rate of early marriage by 0.06% points or more; and an increase in schooling by 0.045 years or more, at the 5% significance level.
Supporting Documents and Materials

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IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
IRB Approval Date
IRB Approval Number
Analysis Plan

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