Building the Capacity of Youth to Contribute to Unity in Diversity

Last registered on May 17, 2023

View Trial History

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title

Building the Capacity of Youth to Contribute to Unity in Diversity

RCT ID

AEARCTR-0011428

Initial registration date

May 15, 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

May 17, 2023, 2:59 PM EDT

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

Locations

Country

India

Region

Primary Investigator

Name

Prashant Loyalka

Affiliation

Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University

Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

Additional Trial Information

Status

On going

Start date

2023-01-01

End date

2024-12-31

Keywords

Behavior, Education, Gender, Post-conflict

Additional Keywords

unity, diversity, prejudice, discrimination, cooperation, RCT, India

JEL code(s)

Secondary IDs

Prior work

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

Abstract

Divisiveness, polarization, and social fragmentation are major obstacles to social progress. They are deepening despite a proliferation of programs created to foster cohesion. Most such programs address divisiveness at the level of form and technique, rather than underlying worldviews and motivations. We explore an alternative pathway built on principles of the oneness of humankind and unity in diversity. We develop and evaluate a “unity in diversity” program that seeks to tap the roots of human identity and motivation. We implement this three-week, intensive program with youth in India. Partnering with a large nonprofit that provides free in-person training for young people, we evaluate the program using a cluster randomized controlled trial involving almost 9,000 individuals. We examine to what degree and how the program affects different types of outcomes such as: 1) discriminatory behaviors (measured using incentivized dictator and trust games); 2) decisions to work with people of diverse backgrounds (measured by examining teammate choices in a real-world project); 3) global citizenship (measured by behaviors associated with participation in an international penpal program); and 4) discriminatory attitudes by caste, religion, gender (measured using survey scales). Evaluating the program’s average and heterogeneous impacts along these and other dimensions will generate knowledge around how youth can actively build united and diverse communities.

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation

Loyalka, Prashant. 2023. "Building the Capacity of Youth to Contribute to Unity in Diversity." AEA RCT Registry. May 17. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.11428-1.0

Sponsors & Partners

Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

Intervention (Hidden)

Intervention Start Date

2023-03-20

Intervention End Date

2023-04-24

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

Primary outcome measures based on endline data collection include: religious discrimination measured using an incentivized dictator game; caste discrimination measured using an incentivized trust game ; decision to donate earnings from incentivized games to a classroom improvement project (1/0); religious discrimination measured using a teammate selection exercise ; decision to register in an extracurricular penpal program with China (1/0)).

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Please see the attached document.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

Secondary outcome measures include but are not limited to: scored content and sentiments in a draft letter to a penpal in China ; level of altruism from the incentivized dictator game ; level of trust from the incentivized trust game ; survey scales examining discriminatory attitudes towards caste, religion, nationality ; survey scales examining attitudes towards global citizenship , social group dominance, and commitment to social betterment; class attendance during the intervention period; class attendance after the intervention period.

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Please see the attached document.

Experimental Design

We conduct a large-scale randomized controlled trial (RCT) with 8,648 students in 644 classes taught by 204 teachers in a non-profit organization in India. Teachers are randomly assigned to a program treatment group and a control group (102 teachers and their ~330 classes in each group). The classes assigned to the treatment receive three weeks of instruction in the unity in diversity program. The control classes receive three weeks of instruction (at the same time as the treatment group) in the non-profit’s regular, pre-existing program curriculum (which emphasizes English language skills, computer skills, and some non-cognitive skills). Approximately one month after the end of the unity in diversity program, we conduct an endline survey and assessment to examine differences between the treatment and control group students.

Experimental Design Details

Randomization Method

done in office by a computer

Randomization Unit

teacher

Was the treatment clustered?

Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters

204 teachers

Sample size: planned number of observations

8648 students, 644 classes, 204 teachers

Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms

102 teachers;102 teachers

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

For the purposes of the power analysis, we set power at 0.8, alpha at 0.01 (in the conservative case of making Bonferroni adjustments to test five different hypotheses), R-squared conservatively at 0.3 (capturing the relationship between the outcome measure and baseline controls), and approximately 42 students per teacher (8,648 students with 204 teachers). After stratifying teachers into groups of 4 based on the baseline index (and randomizing 2 teachers to each treatment condition within each stratum), we estimate that the intraclass correlation coefficient in outcomes is 0.05. For the pairwise treatment-control comparison, the minimum detectable effect size (MDES) is approximately 0.12 SDs. We expect to lose only a small amount of statistical power due to minimal student attrition from baseline to endline surveys.

Supporting Documents and Materials

IRB