Intervention(s)
The intervention will happen in two stages. In the first stage we will collect information from schools about the academic performance of students, age, gender, and a few questions about the social causes that they will be asked to raise awareness. These questions include their perceived awareness about each cause, perceived level of difficulty in raising awareness about each cause, perceived ability to raise awareness about each cause, previous volunteering experience, and 5 multiple-answer quiz questions for each of the cause. Students will be asked to choose the alternatives that they consider correct. The quiz helps to understand their overall knowledge about each cause/topic.
In the second stage, students will be asked to write awareness-raising messages against three social causes: depression, bullying and social exclusion of people with disabilities. Participants will be asked to provide their input in four different conditions, which are described in the experimental design. I partnered with the Observatory for the Rights of Children and Youth in Albania, and the intervention will happen at the same time that the NGO will promote in high-schools the U-Report social messaging platform, which is managed by UNICEF. That is, not only will students register and receive more information about the platform, but they will voluntarily provide input for it, by writing awareness-raising messages.
Both stages will be implemented in the classrooms of the four high-schools that will be part of this project. The Ministry of Education, Sports and Youth has already approved the promotion of U-Report in high-schools as well as the implementation of this research project. The Information and Data Protection Commissioner of Albania has also provided an approval to the Ministry concerning the data that will be collected, and the protection of students' anonymity (de-identification). Most importantly, CERGE-EI has issued the ethical approval for this project.