Cognitive and Non-Cognitive Skills, and Educational Outcomes

Last registered on August 14, 2023

View Trial History

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title

Cognitive and Non-Cognitive Skills, and Educational Outcomes

RCT ID

AEARCTR-0011524

Initial registration date

June 06, 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

June 15, 2023, 3:58 PM EDT

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

Last updated

August 14, 2023, 8:19 AM EDT

Last updated is the most recent time when changes to the trial's registration were published.

Locations

Country

Pakistan

Region

Primary Investigator

Name

Zain Chaudhry

Affiliation

Heidelberg University

Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name

Tobias Korn

PI Affiliation

Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status

On going

Start date

2023-04-01

End date

2023-08-18

Keywords

Education

Additional Keywords

cognitive ability, non-cognitive ability, academic performance, field experiment

JEL code(s)

Secondary IDs

Prior work

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

Abstract

Economic studies often use years of schooling or average enrolment rates as measures of education, even though these readily available measures tend to be very noisy and aggregate a variety of distinct elements. However, recently, the focus has shifted towards the direct measurement of cognitive skills – one of the main skills that we aim to teach students in school and university (Finn et al. 2014; Hanushek and Woessman 2008).

Our research project aims to tackle these aforementioned problems in a Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT). First, we plan to induce random variation in improvements to cognitive and non-cognitive skills by teaching a specifically designed course to university students as part of their education. Our focus will be how academic outcomes are affected by this intervention. We plan to offer undergraduate students a mandatory semester-long course to improve their cognitive skills. We will randomly assign students to one of three experimental groups: (i) a treatment group receiving a cognitive (analytical) skills course, (ii) a second treatment group receiving a non-cognitive (soft) skills course, and (iii) a pure control group. We will measure academic outcomes using surveys, administrative academic data and lab-in-the-field experiments.

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation

Chaudhry, Zain and Tobias Korn. 2023. "Cognitive and Non-Cognitive Skills, and Educational Outcomes." AEA RCT Registry. August 14. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.11524-3.0

Sponsors & Partners

Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

We are teaching one course in cognitive skills (one third each from economics, psychology and philosophy) and one in non-cognitive skills. The students are randomized into groups.

Intervention Start Date

2023-04-01

Intervention End Date

2023-07-31

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

Grade Point Average, knowledge tests

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Knowledge tests

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

We will randomly assign students to one of three experimental groups: (i) a treatment group receiving a cognitive (analytical) skills course, (ii) a second treatment group receiving a non-cognitive (soft) skills course, and (iii) a pure control group.

Experimental Design Details

Randomization Method

Eligible students were randomly allocated to either one of our courses or the control group. The randomization was done with the "randtreat" Command in Stata based on a list of eligible students supplied by our partner university.

Randomization Unit

Individual student

Was the treatment clustered?

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters

No clusters

Sample size: planned number of observations

300 in first round, more later (uncertain because it depends on university enrollment)

Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms

Equally divided between the groups with only small differences due to logistical issues

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

Based on a minimum sample of 750 students assigned to two treatment arms and one control group equally (250 students per group), the minimum detectable effect size is 0.2511 (for a 20% Type II error probability, i.e. beta = 0.2). The enumeration of 750 students is our planned minimum and depends on various local factors. We therefore hope to enumerate more than the minimum of 750 students, the effect size of 0.2511 hence constitutes our most conservative estimate.

Supporting Documents and Materials

IRB