An RCT to Investigate the Impact of a Nudge on Students’ Declaration of Economics Major

Last registered on March 30, 2023

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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title

An RCT to Investigate the Impact of a Nudge on Students’ Declaration of Economics Major

RCT ID

AEARCTR-0011074

Initial registration date

March 29, 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 30, 2023, 4:05 PM EDT

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

Locations

Country

United States of America

Region

Georgia

Primary Investigator

Name

Amy Eremionkhale

Affiliation

Georgia State University

Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name

Shelby Frost

PI Affiliation

Georgia State University

Contact Investigator

PI Name

Lorenzo Almada

PI Affiliation

Georgia State University

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PI Name

Grace Eau

PI Affiliation

Georgia State University

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PI Name

Eye Eoun (Ian) Jung

PI Affiliation

Georgia State University

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PI Name

Glenwood Ross

PI Affiliation

Georgia State University

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Additional Trial Information

Status

In development

Start date

2023-03-13

End date

2023-11-28

Keywords

Behavior, Education

Additional Keywords

JEL code(s)

I23, I2

Secondary IDs

Prior work

This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.

Abstract

The introductory economics courses serve as a gateway to many students in the university experience, most of whom may have never considered having economics declared as a major. This experience is especially true for students from underrepresented backgrounds. This research adds to the current literature by directly investigating the effectiveness of light-touch nudge intervention on the increase in the number of students who declare economics as a major or minor. In addition, we contribute by investigating how the nudge emails affect the socioeconomic and racial diversity of undergraduate Economics. Finally, we investigate the impact of students receiving an email nudging those who performed well in the introductory level economics courses to become Economics majors. We will randomly select students who perform well with an A or B grade in the introductory economics courses to be part of a treatment and control group of students who receive the email nudge from the economics department. The introductory economics courses are ECON 2100 – Global Economy, ECON 2105 – Principles of Macroeconomics, and ECON 2106 – Principles of Microeconomics.

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation

Almada, Lorenzo et al. 2023. "An RCT to Investigate the Impact of a Nudge on Students’ Declaration of Economics Major." AEA RCT Registry. March 30. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.11074-1.0

Sponsors & Partners

Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

We investigate how a nudge email affects a student’s decision to declare economics as a major or minor. Specifically, after the department sends emails, we will compare major declarations of the students who perform well in the introductory economics courses.

Intervention Start Date

2023-03-15

Intervention End Date

2023-09-12

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

Student Major Declaration, Student Minor Declaration.

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

We will collect students’ major and minor declaration data on January 12th, the last registration date for the Spring 2024 semester. The primary outcome will be compared to students’ major and minor at the beginning of the randomization.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

This study uses a randomized control trial to study the impact of email nudges on students’ major and minor declaration decisions. We will have two treatment arms targeting different groups of students. Group 1 will be students who received A- or higher in the introductory level economics course in Fall 2022, and group 2 will be students who received between B+ and B-. We will randomly assign students into treatment and control groups within grade groups. Thus, we have treatment 1, control 1, treatment 2, and control 2. We have a sample size of 1610 students for group 1, divided into 809 students for treatment 1 and 801 for control 1. We have 800 students for group 2, divided into 402 students for treatment 2 and 398 for control 2. Randomization is done in a secure office by a password-protected computer.

Experimental Design Details

Randomization Method

Randomization is done in an office by a computer.

Randomization Unit

Individual

Was the treatment clustered?

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters

Individual randomization

Sample size: planned number of observations

2410 students

Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms

Treatment 1: 809 You’re awesome, econ major suggestion.
Control 1: 801 No message.
Treatment 2: 402 Growth mindset, econ major suggestion.
Control 2: 398 No message.

Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)

If we set an 80% chance (β=0.2) of detecting α = 0.05 level of significance, the MDE for our primary outcome is expected to be 0.124 standard-deviation units for group 1 and 0.176 standard-deviation units for group 2.

Supporting Documents and Materials

IRB