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Field
Abstract
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Before
In poor neighborhoods across Latin America, one of the largest social organizations is the street gang. They are often the largest employer in the neighborhood, especially of poor adolescent boys. It’s striking, then, how little we understand these firms and, most importantly, the decision-making process of young recruits. Medellin, Colombia, has hundreds of well-organized street gangs. We have partnered with the Secretariat of Education to conduct a population-based survey of two cohorts of grade 7 boys. We intend to conduct the surveys in roughly half of Medellin’s 200 public schools, and anticipate that roughly 10,000 boys will participate. In addition to measuring a variety of risk factors and preferences, the survey measures boys’ expectations of the pecuniary and non-pecuniary returns to various careers: low-skill, medium-skill, high-skill, and gang/criminal careers. It also assesses boys’ self-reported interest in each career and the career interests of their friends. Finally, the survey incorporates a series of information experiments to test whether it is possible to correct any misperceptions associated with gang entry. We used a first wave of roughly 1,200 surveys to identify likely misperceptions and pilot information experiments. These will be tested in the remaining to-be-surveyed sample. Experiment 1 targets the perceived returns to medium- and high- skill careers. Experiment 2 targets the perceived non-pecuniary returns to criminal/gang careers (status and enjoyability). Experiment 3 targets the perceived risks of arrest, incarceration, and death. We are interested in how these information treatments affect posterior beliefs, career interest in the gang, and interest in and take-up of information on non-criminal careers. At the present time, Experiment 1 has been piloted and Experiments 2 and 3 are in development.
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After
In poor neighborhoods across Latin America, one of the largest social organizations is the street gang. They are often the largest employer in the neighborhood, especially of poor adolescent boys. It’s striking, then, how little we understand these firms and, most importantly, the decision-making process of young recruits. Medellin, Colombia, has hundreds of well-organized street gangs. We have partnered with the Secretariat of Education to conduct a population-based survey of two cohorts of grade 7 boys. We intend to conduct the surveys in roughly half of Medellin’s 200 public schools, and anticipate that roughly 10,000 boys will participate. In addition to measuring a variety of risk factors and preferences, the survey measures boys’ expectations of the pecuniary and non-pecuniary returns to various careers: low-skill, medium-skill, high-skill, and gang/criminal careers. It also assesses boys’ self-reported interest in each career and the career interests of their friends. Finally, the survey incorporates a series of information experiments to test whether it is possible to correct any misperceptions associated with gang entry. We used a first wave of roughly 1,200 surveys to identify likely misperceptions and pilot information experiments. These will be tested in the remaining to-be-surveyed sample. Experiment 1 targets the perceived returns to medium- and high- skill careers. Experiment 2 targets the perceived non-pecuniary returns to criminal/gang careers (status and enjoyability). We are interested in how these information treatments affect posterior beliefs, career interest in the gang, and interest in and take-up of information on non-criminal careers.
Note that this experimental design was updated in September 2023 to reflect the second information experiment launched in the same month.
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Last Published
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Before
June 06, 2023 09:08 AM
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After
September 25, 2023 02:44 PM
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Field
Intervention (Public)
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Before
Experiment 1: Treated subjects receive information on expected earning potential among three groups: those who do not complete high school; those who complete high school; and those who complete tertiary education. Half of the treated subjects receive the information in the form of statistics and graphical figures. Half of the treated subjects receive the information in the form of a story about three friends who took different educational and career paths.
Experiment 2: (Under development). Treated subjects will receive information designed to reduce expected enjoyablity and status of gang careers.
Experiment 3: (Under development). Treated subjects will receive information designed to change beliefs about the probability of arrest, incarceration, and death in gang and criminal careers.
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After
Experiment 1: Treated subjects receive information on expected earning potential among three groups: those who do not complete high school; those who complete high school; and those who complete tertiary education. Half of the treated subjects receive the information in the form of statistics and graphical figures. Half of the treated subjects receive the information in the form of a story about three friends who took different educational and career paths.
Experiment 2: Treated subjects watch a video featuring three actors who provide dialogue directly taken from interviews with current and former gang members. The selected dialogue emphasizes how they had high expectations of enjoyment and status from gang careers but how in the end status and enjoyability were low and friend, family and community relations were difficult.
Note that this experimental design was updated in September 2023 to reflect the second information experiment launched in the same month.
Experiment 3: (On hold). We originally envisioned a third experiment where treated subjects receive information designed to change beliefs about the probability of arrest, incarceration, and death in gang and criminal careers. This is on hold, in the event that the sample size of surveys can be expanded.
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Primary Outcomes (Explanation)
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Before
The survey collect data on beliefs about the probability of following four paths: legal careers without high school completion; legal careers requiring high school; legal careers requiring tertiary education; and illegal careers with a gang. The respondents are presented with the four paths and 10 tokens. We ask the respondents to pretend the tokens are 10 clones of themselves and place them according to where they expect their future selves to be at age 25. We repeat this question two additional times that resemble the constraints that some students face: without one career option (legal careers requiring tertiary education); and without two career options (legal careers requiring high school; legal careers requiring tertiary education). We then average the number of clones each student puts in the illegal careers with a gang across the three questions. This average is our survey-based outcome of interest in gang careers. In pilot data, roughly 10-15% of respondents place 2 or more of their future selves in the gang. We have created an indicator for this relatively "high" level of interest, with the aim of capturing the (approximately) top decile of risk. We measure this outcome in the survey itself as well as in a subsequent online follow up survey some days after the in-person survey. This follow-up measure (and the effect of time on responses) is a secondary analysis.
The behavioral outcome arises from take-up of a WhatsApp-based message to survey respondents, offering them the opportunity to follow a web link to receive information about educational resources and guidance for higher education. Respondents will have individualized links that will enable us to assess whether they click on the website at all.
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After
The survey collect data on beliefs about the probability of following four paths: legal careers without high school completion; legal careers requiring high school; legal careers requiring tertiary education; and illegal careers with a gang. The respondents are presented with the four paths and 10 tokens. We ask the respondents to pretend the tokens are 10 clones of themselves and place them according to where they expect their future selves to be at age 25. We repeat this question two additional times that resemble the constraints that some students face: without one career option (legal careers requiring tertiary education); and without two career options (legal careers requiring high school; legal careers requiring tertiary education). We then average the number of clones each student puts in the illegal careers with a gang across the three questions. This average is our survey-based outcome of interest in gang careers. In pilot data, roughly 18% of respondents place 2 or more of their future selves in the gang and roughly 8% place 3 or more. We have created an indicator for this relatively "high" level of interest, with the aim of capturing the (approximately) top decile of risk. We measure this outcome in the survey itself as well as in a subsequent online follow up survey some days after the in-person survey. This follow-up measure (and the effect of time on responses) is a secondary analysis.
The behavioral outcome arises from take-up of a WhatsApp-based message to survey respondents, offering them the opportunity to follow a web link to receive information about educational resources and guidance for higher education. Respondents will have individualized links that will enable us to assess whether they click on the website at all.
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Experimental Design (Public)
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Before
Experiment 1:
We expect treatment effects on our primary outcomes to be concentrated among high-risk pupils, and among pupils who underestimate the returns to high-school completion and higher education. We expect our primary outcome regression to take the following form:
Y = b1 T + b2 T*L + b3 T*E + b4 T*L*E + b5 L + b6 E + b7 X + S + e
where
Y is our primary outcome
T is assignment to the information treatment
L is an indicator for low risk (the number of friends interested in the gang career, using the same threshold as Y)
E is a measure of erroneous prior beliefs, centered at zero, where positive values imply overestimating returns to legal careers
X is a set of pre-information experiment control variables taken from survey and administrative data, selected using the double lasso method on primary outcomes
S is a set of school fixed effects
e is an error term (not clustered)
We are primarily interested in b1, the effect of the information treatment on gang entry among high risk youth. We also expect b3 to be greater than zero, implying that impacts are concentrated among youth that underestimate returns to non-criminal careers.
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After
Experiment 1:
We expect treatment effects on our primary outcomes to be concentrated among high-risk pupils, and among pupils who underestimate the returns to high-school completion and higher education. We expect our primary outcome regression to take the following form:
Y = b1 T + b2 T*L + b3 T*E + b4 T*L*E + b5 L + b6 E + b7 X + S + e
where
Y is our primary outcome
T is assignment to the information treatment
L is an indicator for low risk (the number of friends interested in the gang career, using the same threshold as Y)
E is a measure of erroneous prior beliefs, centered at zero, where positive values imply overestimating returns to legal careers
X is a set of pre-information experiment control variables taken from survey and administrative data, selected using the double lasso method on primary outcomes
S is a set of school fixed effects
e is an error term (not clustered)
We are primarily interested in b1, the effect of the information treatment on gang entry among high risk youth. We also expect b3 to be greater than zero, implying that impacts are concentrated among youth that underestimate returns to non-criminal careers.
Experiment 2:
Experiment 2 began in September 2023 at the time of this update.
As with experiment 1, we expect treatment effects on our primary outcomes to be concentrated among high-risk pupils. In this case, also among pupils with high expectations of non-pecuniary returns to criminal/gang careers, such as status and enjoyability. We expect our primary outcome regression to take the following form:
Y = a1 T + a2 T*L + a3 T*E + a4 T*L*E + a5 L + a6 E + a7 X + S + e
where
Y is our primary outcome
T is assignment to the information treatment
L is an indicator for low risk (the number of friends interested in the gang career, using the same threshold as Y)
E is a measure of expected non-pecuniary returns to criminal/gang careers
X is a set of pre-information experiment control variables taken from survey and administrative data, selected using the double lasso method on primary outcomes
S is a set of school fixed effects
e is an error term (not clustered)
We are primarily interested in a1, the effect of the information treatment on gang entry among high risk youth. We also expect a3 to be lower than zero, implying that impacts are concentrated among youth that have high expectations on non-pecuniary returns to non-criminal careers.
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Planned Number of Observations
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Before
We expect an experimental sample size of roughly 3,000-4,000 pupils per information experiment, assuming we are successfully able to recruit roughly 10,000 pupils for the surveys.
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After
We expect an experimental sample size of roughly 3,000-4,000 pupils per information experiment, assuming we are successfully able to recruit roughly 10,000 pupils for the surveys. For Experiment 1, we extended this to nearly 6,000 pupils, because the follow-up survey and behavioral measures were introduced late (due to development time). With a follow-up survey response rate of approximately 40%, this allows us to target roughly 1400 to 1600 completed follow up surveys and behavioral engagements.
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Secondary Outcomes (End Points)
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Before
Our main secondary analysis is the "first-stage" effect of the information treatment on posterior beliefs. For Experiment 1, this is a measure of their beliefs about the returns to higher education. We expect to look at the mean error, but also the perceived differential between higher education and low-education career earnings.
For the behavioral outcome, we also expect to examine levels of engagement with the information offered, including time spent on the web page.
The difference in effectiveness between stories and statistics will be a secondary analysis as well, focusing both on posterior beliefs and also gang behavior.
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After
Our main secondary analysis is the "first-stage" effect of the information treatment on posterior beliefs. For Experiment 1, this is a measure of their beliefs about the returns to higher education. We expect to look at the mean error, but also the perceived differential between higher education and low-education career earnings. For Experiment 2, this is an index of perceived status and enjoyment (non-pecuniary benefits) of gang entry.
We also measure both gang interest and posterior beliefs about income in the follow-up survey some days after the in-person survey. This follow-up measure (and the effect of time on responses) is a secondary analysis (as noted above).
For the behavioral outcome, we also expect to examine levels of engagement with the information offered, including time spent on the web page.
The difference in effectiveness between stories and statistics will be a secondary analysis as well, focusing both on posterior beliefs and also gang behavior.
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