Migration attitudes and perceptions in Australia

Last registered on August 14, 2024
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Migration attitudes and perceptions in Australia
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0014159
Initial registration date
August 12, 2024

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
August 14, 2024, 2:46 PM EDT

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

Locations

Country
Australia
Region
All

Primary Investigator

Name
Ryan Edwards
Affiliation
ANU
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Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Alyssa Leng
PI Affiliation
ANU
Contact Investigator
PI Name
Terence Wood
PI Affiliation
ANU
Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2024-08-15
End date
2024-10-31
Keywords
Labor
Additional Keywords
migration; survey experiment
JEL code(s)
F22, C99
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
This study will evaluate how exposure to different information on domestic issues affect Australians' attitudes towards migration. The first aim of this research is to document people’s perceptions and views of migrants to Australia and opinions on migration policy going forward. Secondly, this research seeks to quantify how the manner of the media’s reporting affects public opinion, and whether providing accurate information on migration in Australia changes people's views. This will be done by fielding an online survey with an embedded experiment to approximately 6000 Australians, in which some randomly selected respondents will receive information or short excerpts of news articles relating to important domestic policy issues such as housing, to see if this results in different responses to those who receive no information or news articles. This trial will show whether providing accurate information or various vignettes can change people's views on migration.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Edwards, Ryan, Alyssa Leng and Terence Wood. 2024. "Migration attitudes and perceptions in Australia." AEA RCT Registry. August 14. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.14159-1.0
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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
The RCT is an online survey experiment with five groups, including the control. There are three priming treatment groups, where each receives receive one of three short newspaper article quotes (i.e., vignettes) concerning housing in Australia and migration, one emotive and negative, one factual and neutral, and one more positive. The primes will be in the middle of the survey after asking respondents about their perceptions of current migration and before asking them about their views. The final treatment involves the last group receiving factually correct information on the current composition of migrants in front certain questions. This group receives correct information for many issues before each question on that issue, so the treatment is best conceived as a bundle.
Intervention Start Date
2024-08-15
Intervention End Date
2024-09-30

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
For the priming interventions, we are interested in whether and how these primes affect ALL responses in section three of the questionnaire (views on immigration policy), especially those sequentially closest to the treatment, such as whether respondents things the current numbers are too high, whether there should be more or less temporary vs permanent migrants, and how many international students should be allowed. Outcomes will be all dichotomised (e.g., more or much more) when the questions are five point scales, and effects on all questions presented for completeness. For the final information treatment providing factual information, we are similarly interested in whether and how this shifts views and will present impacts on all outcomes as with the other three treatments.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
See previous question please.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
The RCT is an online survey experiment with five groups, including the control. It will involve a representative sample of about 5300 Australians. Each participants will be randomly assigned into one of five groups, with about 1000 people in each group. There are three priming treatment groups, where each receives receive one of three short newspaper article quotes (i.e., vignettes) concerning housing in Australia and migration, one emotive and negative, one factual and neutral, and one more positive. The primes will be in the middle of the survey after asking respondents about their perceptions of current migration and before asking them about their views. The final treatment involves the last group receiving factually correct information on the current composition of migrants in front certain questions. This group receives correct information for many issues before each question on that issue, so the treatment is best conceived as a bundle.
Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
Randomisation in office done by a computer, by survey firm.
Randomization Unit
Individual survey respondents.
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
Around 5300 individual respondents.
Sample size: planned number of observations
Around 5300 individual respondents.
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
Around 1000 in each of the experimental groups (i.e., treatment arms and control) .
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
With a binary support indicator at 50 percent, 1000 observations per group, 80 percent power, and an alpha of 0.05, we are powered to detect a 6.25 percentage point increase in support. Starting from a lower share of support, say of 10 percent, then we are powered to detect a four-percentage point increase. o With 500 people per arm the minimum detectable effects fall to 8.8 and 6 percentage points, respectively. The same goes for detecting differences between subgroups, which we are not explicitly factoring into the design (cf., average treatment effects for each arm). We thus aim for 1000 observations per treated group and the remaining larger group as the control group.
Supporting Documents and Materials

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IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Australian National University, Human Ethics Office
IRB Approval Date
2024-07-31
IRB Approval Number
H/2024/0987
Analysis Plan