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Registration

Field Before After
Trial Status in_development completed
Trial End Date March 28, 2025 March 01, 2025
Last Published January 31, 2024 01:15 PM March 05, 2025 04:06 AM
Study Withdrawn No
Intervention Completion Date March 01, 2025
Data Collection Complete Yes
Final Sample Size: Number of Clusters (Unit of Randomization) 741
Final Sample Size: Total Number of Observations 741
Final Sample Size (or Number of Clusters) by Treatment Arms 192 individuals Effort, 180 individuals ability, 192 indivduals parental support, 177 individuals sickness absence
Data Collection Completion Date March 01, 2025
Public analysis plan No Yes
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Papers

Field Before After
Paper Abstract The fairness of admission to upper secondary and higher education is a recurrent political debate in many countries due to the complexity of defining selection criteria. Many systems rely heavily, and some exclusively, on performance measures, such as grades. This study examines the attitudes towards grades as an admission criterion, focusing on how accountability for factors influencing grades-such as effort, ability, parental support, and sickness absence-shapes perceptions of fairness. Using a hypothetical dictator experiment, adolescents were randomly presented with information about the causes of grade differences and asked to assign a study seat to one of two students. The results indicate substantially lower support for the high performer when grade differences are attributed to differences in ability, parental support, or sickness absence, compared to when differences are attributed solely to effort.
Paper Citation Skjelbred, Siv-Elisabeth, The fairness of grades as an admission metric (February 25, 2025). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=5153432 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5153432
Paper URL http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5153432
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