Unlocking Potential: Examining Students' Career and Educational Aspirations

There are 2 interventions are planned to be implemented: The first intervention involves role modeling. Schools will be divided into three groups: a control group and two groups exposed to video interviews of young professionals. First treated group students receive video interviews about these professionals' occupations. And the last group will also receive additional information on their personal life. I plan to estimate if introduced treatments change social norms in the classrooms and students’ aspiration levels.
The second intervention focuses on the peer observability affect. I randomly assign classrooms in every school into two groups: treated and control groups. This intervention aims to study whether students' reported aspirations are influenced by being observed by their peers.

In this project, I plan to study the effect of social norms on students’ educational and career aspirations using field experiments among 15-16-year-old students studying in 9 grades in 60 schools in Uzbekistan. The project will consist of 2 interventions.
In the first intervention, 60 schools will be divided randomly into 3 groups and treatment will be introduced for a 2-month period weekly. The treatment consists of pre-recorded video interviews of 8 different young Uzbek male professionals who are living and working in Uzbekistan. These professionals have high-paying jobs and are married to a wife who has also high-paying jobs. The first group receives no treatment and serves as a control. The second group receives a video every week where a young male professional talks about their career, its advantages, and disadvantages. The last group receives an extended format of the video where these professionals also talk about their family including their marital status, their wife’s occupation, the advantages of having a working wife, or the benefits of dual-earning families. Both treated group students can ask questions or advice from these professionals online during the week when the video is shared with them. I plan to estimate if introduced treatments change social norms in the classrooms and girls’ aspiration levels by comparing the reported aspiration level of students, perceptions on gender roles, their willingness to participate in computer classes, and cooperation between genders in team activities in the classrooms.
n the second intervention I estimate the effect of peer observability on students’ reported career and educational aspiration levels and perception on gender roles. In every 60 schools, I plan to randomly assign classrooms into two groups: observed (treated) and not observed (control). Both groups of classrooms will fill in a similar endline questionnaire consisting of several sections (background information, daily activities, future educational and career plans, perception on gender norms). In observable classrooms, before students start filling out the questionnaire, students will be informed that the responses of the future educational and career plans section and perception on gender roles section of the questionnaire will be shared within the classroom, so they can see and discuss with each other. And the rest part of the questionnaire is totally confidential. In control group classrooms it will be informed that all part of the questionnaire is confidential. I test if girls report lower levels of educational and career aspirations when observable as girls believe it is not a desirable female trait. While boys overreport their aspirations when observable.
Responses of not observed classrooms will inform the effect of the treatment on girls' aspiration levels. Meanwhile, the responses from observable classrooms will explain whether the interventions have prompted any shifts in social norms or beliefs within the classroom.

2023-11-01

2024-06-01

Educational aspiration of students, Career aspiration of students

Educational and career aspiration of the students will be constructed based on a set of questions regarding to career and education plans of students using principal component analyses.

Computer class take up, computer class participation, interest in international available scholarships, perception on gender norms, willingness to participate in class activity.

Perception on gender norms is measured using principal component analyses based on a set of questions that ask students opinion on gender roles

This is a cluster randomized control trial, with the schools as the unit of randomizations. Schools are grouped into 3 groups:
1. Control: No information is shared
2. Treated 1: Students receive information treatment
3. Treated 2: Students receive information treatment an role model treatment.

To implement the role model intervention, I intend to employ a randomization strategy at the school level. This approach is chosen because there is the possibility of children interacting with each other within the school during the treatment period. Regarding the implementation of the second intervention, my plan is to randomize at the classroom level in every school, following a similar approach to Bursztyn et al. (2020), where they examined the impact of peer observability on various outcome variables. In this context, students will be informed of whether they are being observed or not just before beginning the questionnaire. This design is intended to minimize any potential spillover effects between classrooms. Furthermore, I will ensure that all students within a single school start responding to the questionnaire simultaneously in different classrooms, thereby preventing them from observing the treatment status of other classrooms. Since the first intervention is randomized at the school level, this approach will result in nearly equal numbers of observed and unobserved students in both groups of my second intervention.

Randomization done by a computer

There are 2 levels of randomization. First intervention is at school level and school is randomization unit. And for the second intervention classrooms are randomization units.

Yes

60 Schools

80 students/school = 4800 students

20 schools control, 20 schools information treatment, 20 schools information and role model treatment