Remote Socialization: Field Experiment in India

Last registered on October 17, 2023

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Remote Socialization: Field Experiment in India
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0012248
Initial registration date
October 08, 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
October 17, 2023, 11:43 AM EDT

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

Locations

Region

Primary Investigator

Affiliation
London Business School

Other Primary Investigator(s)

Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2023-10-09
End date
2024-04-30
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
Existing research on remote working has yielded mixed results on employee's performance and organizational behavior. They have largely sampled from a population that has started their job working in the office prior to working remotely. As a result, we know very little about the effects of remote working on new hires and the newcomer socialization process. This question is significant as millions of new hires have been socialized exclusively remotely, especially since the Covid-19 pandemic. This RCT studies the effects of remote working vs. office working on new hires.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Chan-Ahuja, Stephanie. 2023. "Remote Socialization: Field Experiment in India." AEA RCT Registry. October 17. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.12248-1.0
Sponsors & Partners

Sponsors

Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
The intervention compares remote working with office working for new hires.
Intervention (Hidden)
The methodology will be a field experiment. We will hire participants from the city of Pune in India for a real-effort task for the duration of three to four weeks. These individuals will have recently graduated from university or will graduate from undergraduate or master’s program in the upcoming year. Participants will be randomized into one of two conditions, with half of the participants in the Remote condition and the other half of the participants in the Office condition. Those randomized into the Remote condition will work from home for three weeks. Comparatively, those randomized into the Office condition will work from an office for three weeks.

On the third week of the task, participants will have an opportunity to remain in the study for a fourth week. If they opt in to staying for a fourth week, all participants will be working remotely. That is, those in the Remote condition will remain working remotely and those in the Office condition will transition to working remotely as well.
Intervention Start Date
2023-10-09
Intervention End Date
2024-04-30

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
The primary outcomes of this study are socialization outcomes and remote work preferences. My primary mediator of this study is colleague interactions.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
Socialization outcomes include the Newcomer Understanding and Integration Scale (general socialization measure), as well as helping behavior, organizational identification, relational identification, and sense of belonging measures.

Remote working preferences will be asked at baseline and endline for comparison.

Colleague interactions are measured in several ways. First, I will collect communication information through Slack, a communication tool that participants will use throughout the study. Second, I will collect self-reported measures of daily interactions through surveys. Third, a research assistant will be conducting participant observations, assisted by security camera footages, to capture communications that are not conducted via Slack.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary outcomes include individual performance, retention, well-being (job satisfaction and engagement), and work-family conflict. My secondary mediators are trust, burnout, and loneliness.

At baseline, I will measure the control variables: self-efficacy, proactive behavior, familiarity with other colleagues prior to the study, personality traits, commute time, and other demographics, including gender, age, caregiving responsibilities, and caste.
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)
Performance will be measured unobtrusively through participants' work as well as elicited through self-reported measures weekly. From their work, I will collect data such as number of texts completed, hours worked, and accuracy scores.

Employee retention will be measured in two ways. First, as a binary variable of whether participants stay would like to stay for a fourth week. Second, conditional on wanting to stay for a fourth week, I measure their reservation wage as a continuous variable. I will measure reservation wage first prior allowing for any discussion with their colleagues and then again after allowing for discussion between colleagues.

Other outcome variables will be measured on a weekly basis through self-reported surveys and baseline measures will be measured once.

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
The experiment will be conducted in Pune.
Experimental Design Details
I will recruit 240 participants to work for a three-to-four-week data annotation task. Participants will apply for this position through online platforms, such as internshala.com. They are expected to have a college degree or above and are required to be proficient in English. Their task is to read and annotate English text based on pre-defined categories.

Participants are individually randomized into Remote or Office conditions. In the Office condition, participants will be working in the office. In the Remote condition, participants will be working remotely.

To collect my measures, participants will complete a baseline survey, daily surveys at the end of their workday, as well as an endline survey with a semi-structured interview.

Additionally, we will collect unobtrusive measures of their communication through their Slack channel and research assistant’s observations of the participants’ communications.

Finally, we will collect performance measures on their data annotation task such as number of texts completed, hours worked, and accuracy.
Randomization Method
Randomization will be done in Stata.
Randomization Unit
Individual
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
240 individuals.
Sample size: planned number of observations
240 individuals.
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
120 individuals in treatment (remote working) and 120 individuals in control (office working).
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
London Business School
IRB Approval Date
2023-08-30
IRB Approval Number
REC892-30082026

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