The effect of receiving free educational support on the propensity to volunteer among secondary school students: An RCT in rural Bangladesh.

In the experiment, besides checking propensity to volunteering using ‘Bales-Volunteerism Activism Scale’ we will offer children from both treatment and control groups to get involved in actual voluntary activity. We will provide them a Sign-up sheet with options of ‘Cleaning activities’ and ‘Helping Grade 1 and Grade 2 students with their homework’. We will elicit their preference from their preference ranking for the given options of volunteering. The volunteer activities are scheduled to occur once a week for an hour, spanning four weeks in October 2023. We will mention that voluntary activities will be held after school hours and will not clash with school activities.

Types and description of volunteer activities
1. Cleaning activities
Volunteers will do some cleaning activities near school campus on a non-school day.
2. Helping Grade 1 and Grade 2 students with their homework
Volunteers will dedicate one hour to assist Grade 1 and Grade 2 students with their homework on a particular day every week.

The students will be requested to sign up for volunteering with their contact details if they are interested. We will use this revealed- preference measure and the sign-ups as an outcome that reflect the intent of the students to volunteer.
Once students sign up for either of the volunteering activities, we will contact them and request their participation in a weekly volunteering session held on a specific day for ‘Cleaning activities’. These volunteer activities will take place near the school premises, and we will appoint observers to keep a record of the volunteer attendance. In the experiment, besides checking propensity to volunteering using ‘Bales-Volunteerism Activism Scale’ we will offer children from both treatment and control groups to get involved in actual voluntary activity. We will provide them a Sign-up sheet with options of ‘Cleaning activities’ and ‘Helping Grade 1 and Grade 2 students with their homework’. We will elicit their preference from their preference ranking for the given options of volunteering. The volunteer activities are scheduled to occur once a week for an hour, spanning four weeks in October 2023. We will mention that voluntary activities will be held after school hours and will not clash with school activities.
Types and description of volunteer activities
1. Cleaning activities
Volunteers will do some cleaning activities near school campus on a non-school day.
2. Helping Grade 1 and Grade 2 students with their homework
Volunteers will dedicate one hour to assist Grade 1 and Grade 2 students with their homework on a particular day every week.

The students will be requested to sign up for volunteering with their contact details if they are interested. We will use this revealed- preference measure and the sign-ups as an outcome that reflect the students' preference and intent to volunteer.

Once students sign up for either of the volunteering activities, we will contact them and request their participation in a weekly volunteering session held on a specific day for ‘Cleaning activities’. These volunteer activities will take place near the school premises, and we will appoint observers to keep a record of the volunteer attendance. On the dedicated days for cleaning activities the volunteers will sign in and then start the cleaning activities. Additionally they will need to sign out at the end of the one hour activity for their attendance to be counted.

For the ‘Helping Grade 1 and Grade 2 students with their homework’ activity we will ask the interested volunteers to seek permission and fix a time with a neighboring child’s parents to help their child for 1 hour for 4 weeks. We will collect the name, address, primary caregivers’ phone number of the child who will be selected by the volunteers for tutoring. We will note the scheduled time of tutoring to make a random visit to verify their attendance. At the end of four weeks, we will collect information regarding attendance from both the volunteer and the tutored child’s parent.

Our focus will be observing whether the students show commitment to their chosen volunteer activities. At the end of volunteering activities which lasted for a month, we will inquire about the volunteer’s motivations for volunteering with a questionnaire. This will enable us to gain a deeper understanding of the underlying reasons driving their decision to engage in volunteer work.

In the experiment, besides checking propensity to volunteering using ‘Bales-Volunteerism Activism Scale’ we will offer children from both treatment and control groups to get involved in actual voluntary activity. We will provide them a Sign-up sheet with options of ‘Cleaning activities’ and ‘Helping Grade 1 and Grade 2 students with their homework’. We will elicit their preference from their preference ranking for the given options of volunteering. The volunteer activities are scheduled to occur once a week for an hour, spanning four weeks in October 2023. We will mention that voluntary activities will be held after school hours and will not clash with school activities.

Types and description of volunteer activities
1. Cleaning activities
Volunteers will do some cleaning activities near school campus on a non-school day.
2. Helping Grade 1 and Grade 2 students with their homework
Volunteers will dedicate one hour to assist Grade 1 and Grade 2 students with their homework on a particular day every week.

The students will be requested to sign up for volunteering with their contact details if they are interested. We will use this revealed- preference measure and the sign-ups as an outcome that reflect the intent of the students to volunteer.
Once students sign up for either of the volunteering activities, we will contact them and request their participation in a weekly volunteering session held on a specific day for ‘Cleaning activities’. These volunteer activities will take place near the school premises, and we will appoint observers to keep a record of the volunteer attendance. In the experiment, besides checking propensity to volunteering using ‘Bales-Volunteerism Activism Scale’ we will offer children from both treatment and control groups to get involved in actual voluntary activity. We will provide them a Sign-up sheet with options of ‘Cleaning activities’ and ‘Helping Grade 1 and Grade 2 students with their homework’. We will elicit their preference from their preference ranking for the given options of volunteering. The volunteer activities are scheduled to occur once a week for an hour, spanning four weeks in October 2023. We will mention that voluntary activities will be held after school hours and will not clash with school activities.
Types and description of volunteer activities
1. Cleaning activities
Volunteers will do some cleaning activities near school campus on a non-school day.
2. Helping Grade 1 and Grade 2 students with their homework
Volunteers will dedicate one hour to assist Grade 1 and Grade 2 students with their homework on a particular day every week.

The students will be requested to sign up for volunteering with their contact details if they are interested. We will use this revealed- preference measure and the sign-ups as an outcome that reflect the students' preference and intent to volunteer.

Once students sign up for either of the volunteering activities, we will contact them and request their participation in a weekly volunteering session held on a specific day for ‘Cleaning activities’. These volunteer activities will take place near the school premises, and we will appoint observers to keep a record of the volunteer attendance. On the dedicated days for cleaning activities the volunteers will sign in and then start the cleaning activities. Additionally they will need to sign out at the end of the one hour activity for their attendance to be counted.

For the ‘Helping Grade 1 and Grade 2 students with their homework’ activity we will ask the interested volunteers to seek permission and fix a time with a neighboring child’s parents to help their child for 1 hour for 4 weeks. We will collect the name, address, primary caregivers’ phone number of the child who will be selected by the volunteers for tutoring. We will note the scheduled time of tutoring to make a random visit to verify their attendance. At the end of four weeks, we will collect information regarding attendance from both the volunteer and the tutored child’s parent.

Our focus will be observing whether the students show commitment to their chosen volunteer activities. At the end of volunteering activities which lasted for a month, we will inquire about the volunteer’s motivations for volunteering with a questionnaire. This will enable us to gain a deeper understanding of the underlying reasons driving their decision to engage in volunteer work.

2023-01-01

2023-06-30

Propensity to volunteer, volunteering preference, participation in actual volunteering activities, motivation to volunteer

1.Propensity to volunteer
We will use “Bales Volunteerism-Activism Scale” (Table A1.1) to check propensity to volunteer. Research has demonstrated that the likelihood of engaging in voluntary work is positively correlated with a higher score on the Activism scale (Bales,1996). The scale has the following dimensions:
1.1 A sense of effectiveness
1.2 Sociability and generability
1.3 Idealism or philosophical commitment
1.4 The ‘feel good’ factor

2. Volunteering preference
To elicit the students' volunteering preferences, we will present them with two options for volunteering activities: 1. Assisting grade 1 and grade 2 students with their homework, and 2. Engaging in cleaning activities. Subsequently, we will compare the preferences between the students in the treatment and control schools to determine if there are any visible differences.
3. Attendance in real volunteering activities
The volunteering activities will be conveniently located either near the school premises or the participants' homes. To ensure proper oversight, we will appoint observers according to the number of students engaging in volunteering activities at each school. These dedicated observers will diligently document the attendance and punctuality of the volunteers as they carry out the cleaning tasks. Additionally, they will verify the students' attendance during tutoring activities.
4. Motivation to volunteer
This construct is measured using the ‘Volunteer Functions Inventory’ (VFI) (Clary et al. 1996), which has been applied widely in volunteering literature. Below is a range of reasons why people might volunteer. We will observe whether the students in the treatment group have greater motivation to volunteer and identify the motivating factor. Students will indicate to what extent each motive may influence their decision to volunteer in the future using the 5-point scale provided. The scale ranges from 1 ‘Very unimportant’ to 5 ‘Very important’. There are 30 questions in the scale which consists of a set of the following six motivational functions served by volunteerism.
4.1 Value
4.2 Understanding
4.3 Social
4.4 Career
4.5 Protective
4.6 Enhancement

This study uses an RCT to assess whether there is a causal link between the program and changes in outcomes. The evaluation of this employs a three-arm clustered RCT design (two treatment groups and one control group).
Randomization is done in 2 stages: We first pick 208 schools from a pre-existing list provided by our partner organizations. We then randomly distribute these 208 schools into the three study arms: T1 (self-help), T2 (assisted), and C (control).
T1 (self-help) and T2 (assisted) will have 69 schools each and Control will have 70 schools. From each school, we will randomly select 15 students on average to participate in the program. We will ensure that about half of the students are female when we randomly select the students to be treated from each treatment school.
The intervention contains three study arms:
a) T1: Self-help group (69 schools, 1058 students) –will only be provided with information on how to access IVR-based lessons and how this program could result in improved educational outcomes (such as higher marks on the SSC exams). Participants will receive regular text messages from the IVR system.
b) T2: Assisted group (69 schools, 1022 students) – Will receive the same information as students in T1. Additional treatment will be provided in the form of biweekly phone calls from a tutor. Participants will also receive regular text messages from the IVR system.
c) T3: Control (70 schools, 1050 students) - This group of students will not be receiving any intervention.

This study uses an RCT to assess whether there is a causal link between the program and changes in outcomes. The evaluation of this employs a three-arm clustered RCT design (two treatment groups and one control group).
Randomization is done in 2 stages: We first pick 208 schools from a pre-existing list provided by our partner organizations. We then randomly distribute these 208 schools into the three study arms: T1 (self-help), T2 (assisted), and C (control).
T1 (self-help) and T2 (assisted) will have 69 schools each and Control will have 70 schools. From each school, we will randomly select 15 students on average to participate in the program. We will ensure that about half of the students are female when we randomly select the students to be treated from each treatment school.
The intervention contains three study arms:
a) T1: Self-help group (69 schools, 1058 students) –will only be provided with information on how to access IVR-based lessons and how this program could result in improved educational outcomes (such as higher marks on the SSC exams). Participants will receive regular text messages from the IVR system.
b) T2: Assisted group (69 schools, 1022 students) – Will receive the same information as students in T1. Additional treatment will be provided in the form of biweekly phone calls from a tutor. Participants will also receive regular text messages from the IVR system.
c) T3: Control (70 schools, 1050 students) - This group of students will not be receiving any intervention.

Randomization done in office by a computer using Stata/BE 17.0

A two-stage randomization procedure will be employed. In particular, we first randomly
assign 208 schools to two treatment groups and one control group, and then within each
school we randomly select 15 students on average (in a way that ensures almost equal numbers of boys
and girls) from each of the 208 schools (for treatment in the treatment schools, and for data
collection in the control schools).

Yes

208 Schools

3,130 pupils

T1: Self-help group: 69 schools (units of randomization), 1058 students (units of observation)
T2: Assisted group: 69 schools (units of randomization), 1022 students (units of observation)
Control: 70 schools (units of randomization), 1050 students (units of observation)

Our power calculations indicate that, if we choose a 0.24 SD effect size, an α level of 0.05, a 0.2 intra-cluster correlation (ICC), and we have a cluster size of 15 students per school, we will require a minimum sample of 3,105 students from the 208 schools evenly distributed across the three treatment arms to achieve 80% statistical power.