Scientific Decision-making (SDM) Measure Validation

Last registered on December 20, 2023

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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title

Scientific Decision-making (SDM) Measure Validation

RCT ID

AEARCTR-0012683

Initial registration date

December 11, 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

December 20, 2023, 9:33 AM EST

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

Locations

Country

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

Region

Country

United States of America

Region

Primary Investigator

Name

Nenad Apostoloski

Affiliation

iNSEAD

Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name

Chiara Spina

PI Affiliation

INSEAD

Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status

In development

Start date

2024-01-10

End date

2024-01-31

Keywords

Education, Firms & Productivity

Additional Keywords

Entrepreneurship, Decision-making

JEL code(s)

M13

Secondary IDs

Prior work

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

Abstract

To understand scientific decision-making (a form of entrepreneurial decision-making), a reliable, standardized, and scalable measure is needed. As a part of the efforts to create a measurement for scientific decision-making, we plan to validate the items in our instrument through a “nudge” experiment. This is crucial, as the entrepreneurship field contains numerous non-validated items, posing a challenge to the integrity of our research. First and foremost, the validated measure ensures reliability that the instrument is measuring what it is meant to measure. That means that the data we collect is consistently and accurately representing the constructs being measured. Additionally, validated items provide us with accuracy and precision estimates of the true values that is essential in making informed decisions.

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation

Apostoloski, Nenad and Chiara Spina. 2023. "Scientific Decision-making (SDM) Measure Validation." AEA RCT Registry. December 20. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.12683-1.0

Sponsors & Partners

Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

In the first part of the experiment after gathering the consent form is the Learning Phase or the intervention. In this phase the participants will have 1 to 3 minutes to learn about a specific decision-making method depending on the group they belong to (participants in the “scientific” entrepreneur group read text about how scientific entrepreneurs behave, participants in the “intuitive” entrepreneur group read a text about how intuitive entrepreneurs behave, and participants in the placebo condition don’t learn anything).

Intervention Start Date

2024-01-15

Intervention End Date

2024-01-29

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

We are interested in the participants' score on the Scientific Decision Making (SDM) measure that consists of 24 survey items and 6 vignette questions. The score is calculated as a combination of scores based on the survey items with polar options that differentiate “higher” from “lower” scientific decision-making and the answers to the vignette questions depicting typical entrepreneurial situations.

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

The experiment will run with entrepreneurs recruited online on Prolific that will be randomly placed in one of the three conditions (scientific entrepreneur, intuitive entrepreneur, and placebo condition – being themselves). The first phase of the experiment after gathering the consent form is the Learning Phase. In this phase the participants will have 1 to 3 minutes to learn about a specific decision-making method depending on the group they belong to (participants in the “scientific” entrepreneur group read text about how scientific entrepreneurs behave, participants in the “intuitive” entrepreneur group read a text about how intuitive entrepreneurs behave, and participants in the placebo condition don’t learn anything). In Phase 2 the participants are asked to apply the decision-making approach they learned about in Phase 1 (except for the placebo group that are asked to be themselves). The participants are presented with the items from the SDM survey and are asked to answer the questions as if they were a “scientific” entrepreneur, an “intuitive” entrepreneur or themselves (placebo condition). We hypothesize that the entrepreneurs in a “scientific” entrepreneur role will have a higher score on the SDM measure than the “intuitive” entrepreneur or the ones in the placebo condition.

Experimental Design Details

Randomization Method

Randomization is done via software by adding a Randomizer block during the survey design in Qualtrics. Thus, the participants are randomly assigned to one of the three conditions (scientific entrepreneur, intuitive entrepreneur, and placebo condition – being themselves) immediately after signing they agree to participate in the study on the consent form.

Randomization Unit

Individual

Was the treatment clustered?

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters

Not clustered

Sample size: planned number of observations

600 observations (1 per participant)

Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms

600 participants (200 participants in the Scientific Treatment arm, 200 participants in the Intuitive Treatment arm, and 200 in the Placebo arm - no treatment). We plan to recruit 600 full-time entrepreneurs on the online platform Prolific between the age of 25 and 70 that are based in the UK or USA with English as their primary language. Additionally, we want them to have a minimum of a high school education (anything above secondary education).

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

Supporting Documents and Materials

IRB