Family Understanding of College Financial Aid

Last registered on June 03, 2026
View Trial History

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Family Understanding of College Financial Aid
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0012175
Initial registration date
May 31, 2026

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 03, 2026, 9:56 AM EDT

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

Locations

Country
United States of America
Region

Primary Investigator

Name
Nick Gebbia
Affiliation
UC Berkeley
Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

Additional Trial Information

Status
Completed
Start date
2023-07-12
End date
2023-10-19
Keywords
Behavior, Education, Welfare
Additional Keywords
JEL code(s)
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
I administer an online survey to approximately three to four thousand parents of parents to measure perceptions of college financial aid, along with a few embedded treatments. The measured perceptions of college aid will inform one paper that measures the welfare cost of misperception of marginal aid phaseout rates. The embedded treatments - which include an information treatment, explainer treatment, savings variation, labor supply framing, and question ordering - may be analyzed in separate future papers.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Gebbia, Nick. 2026. "Family Understanding of College Financial Aid." AEA RCT Registry. June 03. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.12175-1.0
Sponsors & Partners
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Intervention (Hidden)
Intervention Start Date
2023-09-26
Intervention End Date
2023-10-19

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Perceptions of the college aid schedule over parent income and anticipated labor supply and income.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
At entry, respondents are assigned to one cell of a fully-crossed 2×2×2×2×2 factorial design (32 balanced cells) governing five binary factors; perceptions used to construct our primary and instrument measures of aid-phaseout perceptions are elicited before any treatment screen is shown. The five randomized factors are: (i) information treatment — after baseline elicitation, the treated condition displays the true sticker cost and true average single-student aid by income range alongside the respondent's earlier guesses, while the control condition instead displays true enrollment statistics by income range; (ii) explainer — a screen describing aid phaseout as an implicit tax is either shown or not shown; (iii) savings condition — in the instrument elicitation, respondents guess aid for a hypothetical student whose family non-retirement savings is either $5,000 or $500,000; (iv) labor-supply framing — the anticipated labor-supply/income questions are worded either as expected hours/income or as desired hours/income at the usual wage; and (v) question ordering — the labor-supply (hours) and income questions are presented in one of two orders.

After the treatments, respondents complete post-treatment versions of several baseline questions (anticipated labor supply, income, savings, and aid guesses).
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
Randomization done by Qualtrics survey software.
Randomization Unit
Individual survey respondent.
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
N/A no clustering.
Sample size: planned number of observations
I anticipated approximately three to four thousand participants, based on funding for the study and the total number of participants in the online survey platform (Prolific Academic) that match my sample requirements. Exact sample will depend on the takeup among potential participants. One participant is one respondent on Prolific Academic, who is the parent of a child near college age.
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
Each treatment is randomized with a 50% chance of being placed in one of the two arms for that treatment.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
UC Berkeley Committee for Protection of Human Subjects
IRB Approval Date
2023-09-22
IRB Approval Number
N/A
Analysis Plan

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
No
Data Collection Complete
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials