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Field
Trial End Date
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Before
January 01, 2025
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After
May 01, 2025
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Field
Last Published
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Before
June 24, 2024 01:40 PM
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After
November 07, 2024 12:32 PM
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Field
Intervention (Public)
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Before
This project has two interventions.
First, after collecting information about the implicit bias of firms’ human resource personnel we will provide feedback on the result of their own implicit bias. To estimate the causal effect of this information we will allocate firms randomly into two groups. Group 1 will receive an email with the IAT feedback a few weeks after taking the IAT. Group 2 will receive the same feedback approximately 6 months after taking the IAT.
The second intervention uses information about firms’ behavior to change job counselors' referral of Afro-descendants. In the interview with job counselors, we will elicit their beliefs about the probability that a CV from an afro-descendant will be interviewed and hired after being referred. We then can contrast this belief with the same observed probability at the PES and to the information from the interview to firms’ HR. If there is a mismatch, the belief is lower than the actual probability from the SPE, we will send this information to a random group of job counselors expecting them to update their belief and increase the referral rates of Afro-descendants. If the job counselors' beliefs are above the actual rate observed in the PES data, we could use the declared likelihood by firms in our interview. We expect this likelihood to be an upper bound of the actual probability of hiring due in part to social desirability bias by the firms. A possible complication in this case is that job counselors consider in their calculations the fact that firms may overestimate their willingness to hire afro-descendants and our information campaign may not be believable. We will discuss this possibility with CCFs and ASOCAJAS to tailor the intervention. In the case that counselors' beliefs are accurate, we will move to an intervention that uses information about the efforts by governments and institutions in the region to reduce the racial employment gap. In that instance, we will contrast their beliefs against the possible change in the social norm that could be driven by policies or private efforts.
Regardless of the information we provide, once again we divide job counselors into two groups. Group 1 will receive this information a few weeks after we finish data collection. Group 2 will receive the information approximately 4 months later.
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After
This project has two interventions.
First, after collecting information about the implicit bias of firms’ human resource personnel we will provide feedback on the result of their own implicit bias. To estimate the causal effect of this information we will allocate firms randomly into two groups. Group 1 will receive an email with the IAT feedback a few weeks after taking the IAT. Group 2 will receive the same feedback approximately 6 months after taking the IAT.
The second intervention uses information about firms’ behavior to change job counselors' referral of Afro-descendants. The hypothesis is that job counselors may underestimate how impactful they can be in reducing the racial gap in employment. This behavior may come from two sources. First, counselors may underestimate the probability that a referred Afro-descendant because they overestimate firms’ biases. Second, they may underestimate their own importance in the job search process. We call the first channel the mismatch channel, and the second the task significance channel. Hence, we will provide information about how important job counselors are in increasing the chances of Afro-descendant employability. Our message has 3 parts.
1. Afro-descendants get less referrals than non-Afro-descendants.
2. Afro-descendants are more likely to find a job if they are referred than when they apply for a job by themselves.
3. Firms declare that they are more likely to interview an Afro-descendant than job counselors believe.
We use information from the SPE and the entry surveys (both to counselors and firms) to support the three statements.
Regardless of the information we provide, once again we divide job counselors into two groups. Group 1 will receive this information a few weeks after we finish data collection. Group 2 will receive the information approximately 4 months later.
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Field
Intervention Start Date
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Before
August 01, 2024
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After
November 01, 2024
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Field
Intervention End Date
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Before
September 01, 2024
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After
November 10, 2024
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Field
Experimental Design (Public)
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Before
We will randomize by intervention.
Intervention 1 - information to firms' personnel about their own IAT results.
Randomization is at the firm level in two groups. We will stratify randomization by firm size, region, and sector.
Treated: They will receive the IAT results a few weeks after completing baseline data collection.
Control: They will receive the IAT results about four (4) months after completing baseline data collection.
Intervention 2 - Information to job counselors about firms' beliefs/attitudes about afro-descendant job seekers.
Randomization is at the job center level in two groups. We will stratify by region and job center size.
Treated: They will receive information about firms a few weeks after completing baseline data collection.
Control: They will receive information about firms about four (4) months after completing baseline data collection.
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After
We will randomize by intervention.
Intervention 1 - information to firms' personnel about their own IAT results.
Randomization is at the firm level in two groups. We will stratify randomization by size (less than 50 workers, more than 50 workers), sector (commerce, manufacturing, agriculture, and services), region, age (less than 3 years, 3 years or more), and the IAT score (with one respondent with a score lower than 0.35, with no respondent with an IAT score below 0.35).
Treated: They will receive the IAT results a few weeks after completing baseline data collection.
Control: They will receive the IAT results about four (4) months after completing baseline data collection.
Intervention 2 - Information to job counselors about the importance of referrals to increase the employability of afro-descendant job seekers.
Randomization is at the job center level in two groups. We will stratify by region, size in terms of how many job counselors work in the job center, size with respect to how many CVs they manage in a given month, and their IAT score (at least one counselor with an IAT lower than 0.35, no counselor with IAT score lower than 0.35).
Treated: They will receive information about firms a few weeks after completing baseline data collection.
Control: They will receive information about firms about four (4) months after completing baseline data collection.
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Field
Randomization Unit
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Before
The first intervention will be randomized at the firm level. The second intervention will be randomized the employment center level.
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After
The first intervention will be randomized at the firm level.
The second intervention will be randomized the employment center level.
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Field
Planned Number of Clusters
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Before
First intervention: 1500 firms
Second intervention: 350 job counselors in 80 job centers
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After
First intervention: 788 firms (respondents to the entry survey)
Second intervention: 122 job centers
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Field
Planned Number of Observations
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Before
First intervention: Personnel for at least 1500 firms
Second intervention: 350 job counselors in 80 job centers
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After
First intervention: 867 individuals in 788 firms (respondents to the entry survey)
Second intervention: 460 job counselors in 122 job centers
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Field
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
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Before
Intervention 1: We expect 750 firms by arm.
Intervention 2: We expect 40 job centers (125 job counselors) by arm.
We will check that job centers in Intervention 2 are balanced within the Intervention 1 group to examine heterogeneity in the impact of Intervention 1 with respect to the information given in Intervention 2.
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After
Intervention 1: We expect 385 firms by arm.
Intervention 2: We expect 61 job centers by arm.
We will check that job centers in Intervention 2 are balanced within the Intervention 1 group to examine heterogeneity in the impact of Intervention 1 with respect to the information given in Intervention 2.
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Field
Power calculation: Minimum Detectable Effect Size for Main Outcomes
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Before
First intervention: Our goal is to reach 1,500 firms who posted a job opening before our intervention and will be likely to post at least one job offer after our intervention. According to our calculations, the minimum detectable effect from this analysis will be 0.12 standard deviations.
Second intervention: With 350 counselors working in 80 job centers we aim to estimate effects above 0.28 standard deviations.
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After
First intervention:
We calculated the MDE for an estimation of the probability that an Afro-descendant job seeker is hired at least once using the SPE data.
With matched the respondent firms with the SPE data for a total of 701 firms in the sample. Then, for these firms, the probability that an Afro-descendant is hired is 10.5%, and the MDE is 8 percentage points. For the probability of being hired after referral, the average 19.5% and the MDE is 12 percentage points.
Second intervention:
We calculated the MDE for an estimation of the probability that an Afro-descendant job seeker is referred at least once using the SPE data.
With matched the respondent job centers with the SPE data for a total of 102 job centers in the sample. Using this sample, the probability that an Afro-descendant is referred to at least one job is 48.5 and the MDE is 2 percentage points.
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