Civic Education at Scale in Mexico

Last registered on January 06, 2025

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Civic Education at Scale in Mexico
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0015115
Initial registration date
January 06, 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 06, 2025, 12:52 PM EST

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

Locations

There is information in this trial unavailable to the public. Use the button below to request access.

Request Information

Primary Investigator

Affiliation
MSU

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Affiliation
ITAM

Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2025-01-06
End date
2027-03-28
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
We propose to conduct a two-year randomized field experiment to evaluate the effectiveness of a curricular civic education intervention on college-age students and the middle school students they mentor in Mexico. Evaluating which policies can support democracy in a period of democratic backsliding is extremely important, but rigorous evidence on the causal effects of civic education on democratic behaviors is scarce. We will implement such a course in Mexico, a large country of great strategic importance to the US, where democratic institutions are being rapidly undermined (Krauze, 2023). Specifically, the project aims to test hypotheses on the following questions: 1. To what extent can civic education strengthen democratic values and behaviors such as attitudes towards democracy, tolerant behaviors, and participation in democratic processes? 2. Can civic education be effectively delivered remotely in a scalable way?
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Seira, Enrique and Alberto Simpser. 2025. "Civic Education at Scale in Mexico." AEA RCT Registry. January 06. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.15115-1.0
Sponsors & Partners

There is information in this trial unavailable to the public. Use the button below to request access.

Request Information
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
The randomized controlled trial will deliver a civic education course on JANN’s platform on a group of about 2,000 college-student tutors and about 6000 to 10,000 of their middle- and primary school students. Tutors and their corresponding students will be randomized into a treatment arm or a placebo control. The college tutors assigned to the treatment arm will take 5 civic education activities that require 20 hours of commitment. Once they master the content, they will adapt it to teach it to the middle- and primary-school students assigned to them. The control arm will work similarly, but the course will focus on artificial intelligence.
Intervention Start Date
2025-01-10
Intervention End Date
2027-03-28

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Survey measures:
1. Factual knowledge of course content.
2. Factual knowledge of current political events and policies in Mexico not be taught in the intervention
3. Attitudes towards democracy and authoritarianism measured with classic survey questions
4. Affective polarization measured with classic feeling thermometer questions
REVEALED PREFERENCES / INCENTIVIZED BEHAVIORS
5. Experiment on choice of decision method. Within small groups charged with making a decision or choice, a randomly appointed group leader will select whether to make the choice herself or put it to a vote.
6. Experiments on respect for majority decisions. Participants will make a choice about what food to provide for the group. Participants who are in the minority of a collective decision will be given the choice to either impose their personal preferences on the rest of the group or to respect the majority’s choice.
7. Willingness to post a pro-democracy message on social media.
8. Willingness to attend online meeting with out-partisans.
9. Conjoint choice experiment on candidate selection, probing democratic vs. authoritarian preferences and tradeoffs, as in Graham and Svolik (2020).
10. Sharing game (Cappelen et al 2005) with in-partisans and out-partisans.
11. Implicit association test. We will implement an implicit association test focusing on attitudes towards democracy vs autocracy.
(POTENTIALLY): ADMIN DATA ON VOTING
12. Obtaining or renewing the voter ID registration card
13. Voter turnout in the 2027 midterm federal elections

Hypotheses: Effect of civic education intervention:
o H1. Factual Knowledge. Treatment will increase knowledge in comparison with the control group. The null hypothesis is no effect. (Measures 1-2)
o H2. Attitudes. Treatment will enhance attitudes in support of democracy and tolerance for the outgroup in comparison with the control group. (Measures 3-4)
o H3. Democratic behaviors. Tutors in the treatment group will have a larger tendency to support voting and respect voting decisions versus imposing their individual will (measures 5-6) and democratic behaviors (measures 7-13) in comparison with the control group (12 and 13 pending availability of data).

Because our hypothesis are directional, we plan to use one-sided t-tests
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary outcomes will be a simplified version of the democratic attitudes questions for students and their parents.
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
The randomized controlled trial will deliver a civic education course on JANN’s platform on a group of about 2,000 college-student tutors and about 6000 to 10,000 of their middle- and primary school students. Tutors and their corresponding students will be randomized into a treatment arm or a placebo control. The college tutors assigned to the treatment arm will take 5 civic education activities that require 20 hours of commitment. Once they master the content, they will adapt it to teach it to the middle- and primary-school students assigned to them. The control arm will work similarly, but the course will focus on artificial intelligence. We will primarily focus on outcomes for tutors who must learn and then teach the course.
Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
Randomization in Stata, in batches.
Randomization Unit
Individual tutors will be randomized first into treatment or control (individual randomization)
Then, individual students will be randomly assigned to tutors (individual randomization)
Outcomes for tutors are not clustered (outcomes for students, which are secondary, will be clustered at the tutor level)
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
2000 tutors (clusters)
Sample size: planned number of observations
2000 total tutors (and their 10,000 students)
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
1000 tutors to civic education course
1000 tutors to AI course
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
The main test compares the control condition with the civic education arm. We are to be sufficiently powered for a minimum detectable effect ranging in 0.1 to 0.2 standard deviations in an outcomes index with 80% power and 95% confidence. For instance, recent studies of civic education's effects on voter turnout have found effects of about 6 - 6.6 percentage points, or about 0.13 standard deviations. We have 84% power to detect a 6pp increase in voting, 76% to detect a 3pp effect on affective polarization, 96% to detect effect on whether democracy is the best form of government, 60% for IAT.
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
ITAM IRB IORG0011580
IRB Approval Date
2023-09-19
IRB Approval Number
N/A