Purposeful Education: A randomized controlled trial in Norwegian vocational high schools

Last registered on January 30, 2025
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Purposeful Education: A randomized controlled trial in Norwegian vocational high schools
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0014540
Initial registration date
January 27, 2025

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
January 30, 2025, 10:49 AM EST

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

Locations

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Primary Investigator

Name
Sara Helene Ronningstad
Affiliation
University of Stavanger
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Other Primary Investigator(s)

Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2025-02-03
End date
2033-12-31
Keywords
Behavior, Education
Additional Keywords
Purpose
JEL code(s)
I21
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
There is a large need for skilled workers with a vocational education, but vocational
high school students face challenges in maintaining motivation. This
randomized controlled trial will study a "purpose for learning" - intervention which promotes awareness of meaningful benefits to learning skills.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Ronningstad, Sara Helene. 2025. "Purposeful Education: A randomized controlled trial in Norwegian vocational high schools." AEA RCT Registry. January 30. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.14540-1.0
Sponsors & Partners
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Intervention Start Date
2025-10-27
Intervention End Date
2026-03-20

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
-Engagement
-Grades
-Grades for students with grades below the median
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
Main Outcome: Engagement
Engagement describes students’ active participation in school activities. It can
be separated into emotional engagement (enjoying, being interested in school
activities) and behavioural engagement (actively working and trying hard in
school) (Skinner et al., 2008). In this study, only the behavioural engagement
sub-scale will be used. This is done for brevity and because this has a strongest
correlation with academic achievement (Lei et al., 2018). Engagement will be
measured at the baseline and the follow-up survey. I will use factor analysis to make a measurement model.

Main Outcome: Grades
I will obtain a grade average from school administrative data, and baseline grades from the previous school year.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
• Number of subjects failed
• School absence.
• Successful transitions to apprenticeship/supplementary studies after 2nd year.
• Likelihood of completing vocational high school within 4 years after the study
• Well-being
• Expected meaning at work
• Meaning at school
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)
I will apply factor analysis and IRT to the outcomes measured by self-report.

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
The survey will be administered online, through the platform Nettskjema. The
teachers will send a link to the students which can be accessed from their computer
or smartphone. Teachers will keep the students from discussing with each
other during the survey.
Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
When a student has filled out the consent form and the baseline measures, the survey platform randomly forwards them to either the treatment survey or the control survey.
Randomization Unit
Individual
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
4 schools, 130 classes
Sample size: planned number of observations
1800 students
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
900 students treatment
900 students control
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
With a sample size of 1,800 students, there is an 80% probability (power=0.8) of detecting an effect size of 0.13 of a standard deviation. However, if added covariates explain 0.3 standard deviations of the variation in the outcome variable, the minimum detectable effect size (MDES) is 0.11. For the 50% of students who are lower performing: MDES is 0.19 without co-variates and 0.16 with co-variates.
Supporting Documents and Materials

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IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
HHUiS-IRB
IRB Approval Date
2024-11-25
IRB Approval Number
HHUiS-IRB-2024-002
Analysis Plan

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