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Trial Status
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Before
in_development
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completed
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Abstract
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Before
Using data collected from surveys conducted at Arizona State University, this paper aims to investigate the willingness to pay of students for professor characteristics featured on online review platforms like RateMyProfessor. Specifically, the study analyzes students' perceptions of quality and difficulty ratings on such websites and models their expectations of these characteristics after receiving the signal, which, in this context, is the rating. Through the gathered data, the aim is to disentangle gender-based taste-based discrimination, statistical discrimination, and the role model effect to gain deeper insights into the role gender plays in professor selection.
In the latter part of the survey, participants are presented with a video, which may either serve as a control or a treatment. The treatment video educates students about the gender bias prevalent in the ratings, whereby women tend to receive more severe ratings compared to their male counterparts. This intervention seeks to guide students toward formulating an expected quality and difficulty that acknowledges the biases present between female and male professors, thereby mitigating statistical discrimination in their decision-making processes.
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After
Using data collected from surveys conducted at Arizona State University, this paper aims to investigate the willingness to pay of students for professor characteristics featured on online review platforms like RateMyProfessor. Specifically, the study analyzes students' perceptions of quality and difficulty ratings on such websites and models their expectations of these characteristics after receiving the signal, which, in this context, is the rating. Through the gathered data, the aim is to disentangle gender-based taste-based preferences (such as preferences for a gender outside of quality and the role model effect) and statistical discrimination to gain deeper insights into the role gender plays in professor selection.
In the latter part of the survey, participants are presented with a video, which may either serve as a control or a treatment. The treatment video educates students about the gender bias prevalent in the ratings, whereby women tend to receive more severe ratings compared to their male counterparts. This intervention seeks to guide students toward formulating an expected quality and difficulty that acknowledges the biases present between female and male professors, thereby mitigating statistical discrimination in their decision-making processes.
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Last Published
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Before
February 14, 2024 04:59 PM
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After
August 22, 2025 07:27 PM
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Experimental Design (Public)
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Before
- Students are recruited to take part in the survey
- The survey takes students through multiple questions regarding preferences and then they are presented with scenarios with varying professor characteristics (quality, difficulty, research faculty status, gender) and they are asked to choose a professor as well as report the expected grade and effort that they believe they would get with each professor.
- Students are also asked to report their beliefs about the means of the signals of quality and difficulty as well as their true values. They are also asked questions so that we can compute the variance of the "true" quality and difficulty distributions along with the signal distributions.
- Toward the end of the survey students are either shown a treatment or a control video
- After 3 days, if the student was treated, they are sent an email with bullet points regarding the video they were shown.
- After a week, they are given a second survey to complete for us to see if students have internalized the information we have given them about gender biases.
- Using these two surveys, I can construct Willingness to pay measures for quality, difficulty, research faculty status, and gender. Then using the mechanisms that I would outline in my model, I can disentangle statistical and taste-based discrimination as well as the gender matching effect.
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After
- Students are recruited to take part in the survey
- The survey takes students through multiple questions regarding preferences and then they are presented with scenarios with varying professor characteristics (quality, difficulty, research faculty status, gender) and they are asked to choose a professor as well as report the expected grade and effort that they believe they would get with each professor.
- Students are also asked to report their beliefs about the means of the signals of quality and difficulty as well as their true values. They are also asked questions so that we can compute the variance of the "true" quality and difficulty distributions along with the signal distributions.
- Toward the end of the survey students are either shown a treatment or a control video
- After 3 days, if the student was treated, they are sent an email with bullet points regarding the video they were shown.
- After 3 weeks (the decision to change the roll out of the second survey was made prior to the beginning of this study), they are given a second survey to complete for us to see if students have internalized the information we have given them about gender biases.
- Using these two surveys, I can construct Willingness to pay measures for quality, difficulty, research faculty status, and gender. Then using the mechanisms that I would outline in my model, I can disentangle statistical and taste-based discrimination as well as the gender matching effect.
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