Abstract
I investigate how disclosing information about selection for a beneficial opportunity, such as an educational program, impacts participation (take-up) of that opportunity. The conjecture is that depending on the information received and who knows about it, selection criteria can trigger personal and image concerns, which may be manifested positively (triggering pride) or negatively (triggering stigma).
The program is offered as an opportunity granted by an international institution. It is free and self-paced. It consists of 9 online sessions of 30 mins each. The objective of the program is to help develop skills to better attain goals.
Selection focuses on merit (high academic achievement) and identity (low socio-economic status). Targeted individuals are university students to whom the program is offered. Some receive no information about selection (No Info treatment). Others are told they are selected because of who they are, e.g. low SES (ID treatment), because of what they have achieved, e.g. academic merit (Merit Treatment) or both (ID+Merit Treatment. the process of information disclosure is sequential.
In a first stage individuals are all informed of the quality and benefits of the program and asked to pre-register (before the course starts). This provides a sample of participants that are all interested in the program.
Then, before lesson 1, they are sent an information email revealing that they have been granted a slot in the program and the reasons for it (one of four experimental conditions). This reveals privately the selection criteria. The conjecture is that if personal image concerns are activated, being selected because of one's identity can be negatively perceived, being selected because of one's achievements can be positively perceived.
By lesson 3, as the program progresses, participants are informed that a report with their names of all who complete the course and the reasons for their selection will be sent to the university administration for them to keep in their records. But are also given the possibility to optout from it. This is meant to trigger public image concerns, which again are expected to go in the same direction as the private image concerns. However, instead of dropping out from the program, the optout possibility allows participants who feel stigmatized to anonymize their participation.
Finally, before the end of the course ends, I offer participants the possibility to earn money in exchange for keeping their name and reasons for selection in the report. This allows me to assess the potential monetary cost of social image.
I conduct this field study in two universities simultaneously. University A is larger and has diversity in student backgrounds: there are high and low SES students. University B is smaller and has almost no diversity: most students are low SES. This allows me to also evaluate the effects of information and image concerns in two separate settings.
The main outcome measure is participation in the program. This can be seen as a collection of different variables: (i) registration, (ii) take-up, starting the course conditional on registering, (iii) completion, finishing the course conditional on completion, (iv) opt-in/opt-out from the report. In addition, I will have complementary measures of effort. As the lessons are online, I have data on the time spent on each video lecture, on the score of a quiz conducted after each lecture (no grades are given to the students), and on class activities. I also have measures of the program evaluation, at the lesson-level I have ratings of each class, and at the program-level I conduct a course evaluation. I will evaluate the effect of the information provided about the selection criteria (the treatments) on these measures.
Specifically, the main sample are students from low SES with high academic merit. But as I did not exclude any student who registered to the program, I assigned others with a different profile to specific treatments. Students with low SES and low merit are assigned to treatment ID. This allows me to compare the effect of merit when identity is disclosed as the selection criteria. Students with high merit with high SES are assigned to treatment Merit. This allows me to compare the effect of socio-economic status when academic achievements are disclosed as the selection criteria. Those of high ses and low merit are assigned to treatment No Info.
I target a total of 6956 students: 4164 from university A and 2792 from university B. These students receive the invitation to register in the study. Most of the analysis, however, is conducted with those who do register.