Peer Perceptions and Students' Investments in Schoolwork --- Second Randomized Controlled Trial and Additional Data Collection

Last registered on March 08, 2023

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Peer Perceptions and Students' Investments in Schoolwork --- Second Randomized Controlled Trial and Additional Data Collection
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0010975
Initial registration date
February 23, 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
March 08, 2023, 11:24 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
CNRS and THEMA CY Cergy University

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Affiliation
Norwegian School of Economics

Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2023-02-24
End date
2025-06-30
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial is based on or builds upon one or more prior RCTs.
Abstract
The present project is a follow-up to a randomized controlled trial investigating students’ misperceptions about their peers’ study time, and their impacts on students’ own schoolwork investments. The initial randomized controlled trial was pre-registered at the AEA RCT registry prior to data collection (AEARCTR-0005514). The present pre-analysis plan should be read as an addition to the former pre-analysis plan. The main goals of the second randomized controlled trial and of the additional data collection are (i) to strengthen the robustness of the initial findings, (ii) to investigate the mechanisms behind the main findings.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Falch, Ranveig and Fanny Landaud. 2023. "Peer Perceptions and Students' Investments in Schoolwork --- Second Randomized Controlled Trial and Additional Data Collection." AEA RCT Registry. March 08. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.10975-1.0
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
This project aims (i) at providing incentivized evidence on students' beliefs about their peers' study time, (ii) at evaluating the effects of an information treatment recalibrating students' beliefs about their peers' study time.

The project aims at investigating the effects of the information treatment on the short and longer term (i.e., right after the information treatment, and about a month later), and it also aims at investigating the direct and indirect effects of the treatment (i.e., its direct effects on the students receiving the information treatment, and its indirect effects on the students who did not receive the information treatment but were indirectly treated through their classmates).
Intervention Start Date
2023-02-24
Intervention End Date
2023-06-30

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Firstly, this project aims at providing incentivized evidence on students’ beliefs about their peers’ study time.

Secondly, this project investigates the effects of an information treatment which recalibrates students’ beliefs about their peers’ study time. We study the effects of recalibrating students’ beliefs about their peers’ schoolwork investments on four main outcomes (two short-term outcomes, and two longer-term outcomes):

(i) intended study time measured right after the information treatment (only for students below the median study time of their class).
(ii) students’ willingness to pay for a text-messages coaching program aimed at motivating them to remember and achieve their schoolwork goal, measured right after the information treatment (only for students below the median study time of their class).
(iii) students’ beliefs about their peers’ study time, measured about a month after the information treatment.
(iv) study time during the weeks following the information treatment.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
See the pre analysis plan for the secondary outcomes.
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)
To shed light on the mechanisms, the second randomized controlled trial and data collection further investigates how recalibrating students’ beliefs about their peers’ study time affects:

(i) students’ beliefs about the role of study effort vs. ability in explaining schooling performances.
(ii) students’ beliefs about their relative ability compared to their classmates’.
(iii) students’ emotional health.
(iv) students’ educational aspirations.

These secondary outcomes are all measured about a month after the information treatment on peers’ study time.

To better understand the long-term consequences of students’ misperceptions about their peers’ study time, the second randomized controlled trial and data collection also aims at investigating the effects of the information treatment on students’ middle school grades and on their high school enrollment (conditional on available administrative data). However, we acknowledge that we have low expectations that a one-time information treatment could have significant impacts on these longer-run educational outcomes.

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
As in the first randomized controlled trial, we aim (i) at providing incentivized evidence on students’ beliefs about their peers’ study time, (ii) at evaluating the effects of an information treatment recalibrating students’ beliefs about their peers’ study time.
We aim at investigating the effects of the information treatment on the short and longer terms (i.e., right after the information treatment, and about a month later), and we also aim at investigating its direct and indirect effects (i.e., its direct effects on the students receiving the information treatment, and its indirect effects on the students who did not receive the information treatment but were indirectly treated through their classmates).

The project targets 10th graders in Norwegian middle schools. In the second randomized controlled trial, we plan on recruiting at least 20 schools. We expect about 3 classes per school and about 15 consenting students per class, resulting in a sample size of at least 900 students. We will add this second round of data collection to the first round which comprises 23 schools, 78 classes, and 998 students.

The randomization will be implemented at the class level and stratified within schools. For each school participating in the study, before the intervention, we will randomly select treated and control classes. We will first form strata of two or three classes within each volunteer school; the strata will be based on the consent rate within each class. Within each strata, classes will then be assigned to the treatment or control condition on a random basis.

In each class assigned to the treatment condition, all the students whose reported study time at baseline is strictly below the median of their class will receive an information treatment on their classmates’ study time. Students in classes assigned to the control condition and students whose reported study time at baseline is above the median of their class will not receive the information treatment.
Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
Computerized randomization using Stata.
Randomization Unit
Classes.
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
At least 60 classes.
Sample size: planned number of observations
At least 900 students.
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
At least 30 classes randomly assigned to the treatment condition, and at least 30 classes randomly assigned to the control condition.

Within treated classes, about 50% of students will receive the information treatment.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
-Intended study time right after the information treatment above the baseline class median: +0.08. -High willingness to pay for a coaching sms-program measured right after the information treatment: +0.10. -Wedge in students’ belief about their peers’ study time one month after the information treatment: -0.06. -Study time one month after the information treatment above the baseline class median: +0.06. The minimum detectable effects are computed with a sample size of 140 classes (minimum expected sample size from the first and second randomized controlled trials) with 7.5 or 15 students per class (for short-term and longer-term outcomes respectively), and using information from the first randomized controlled trial on the mean, standard deviation and intra-class correlations of the main outcomes.
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
NHH Norwegian School of Economics Institutional Review Board
IRB Approval Date
2020-02-21
IRB Approval Number
1/20
IRB Name
NHH Norwegian School of Economics Institutional Review Board
IRB Approval Date
2023-01-20
IRB Approval Number
44/22
IRB Name
NSD - Norwegian Centre for Research Data
IRB Approval Date
2020-01-07
IRB Approval Number
328704
Analysis Plan

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