Exploring teacher’s repetition biases with a survey experiment

Last registered on March 21, 2025

View Trial History

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title

Exploring teacher’s repetition biases with a survey experiment

RCT ID

AEARCTR-0015120

Initial registration date

March 16, 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

March 21, 2025, 9:52 AM EDT

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

Locations

Country

Spain

Region

Primary Investigator

Name

Ignacio Garijo Campos

Affiliation

Universidad Loyola Andalucía

Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name

Antonio Alfonso

PI Affiliation

Universidad Loyola Andalucía

Contact Investigator

PI Name

Diego Jorrat

PI Affiliation

Universidad Loyola Andalucía

Contact Investigator

PI Name

Ángel Sánchez

PI Affiliation

Universidad Carlos III

Contact Investigator

PI Name

Pablo Branas

PI Affiliation

Universidad Loyola Andalucía

Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status

In development

Start date

2025-03-17

End date

2025-04-04

Keywords

Education

Additional Keywords

Education, survey experiment, priming, teachers, grade repetition, repetition, behavioral

JEL code(s)

I21

Secondary IDs

Prior work

This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.

Abstract

Grade repetition has been widely debated due to its potential negative effects on students' self-esteem and long-term academic performance. While most research has focused on student outcomes, this study shifts the perspective to teachers' decision-making in grade repetition cases. We conduct a survey experiment in Spain, where the repetition rate is significantly higher than the OECD average. Teachers evaluate hypothetical student profiles with varying characteristics and decide whether each student should repeat a grade. Our design allows us to analyze the impact of policy exposure, preference alignment, and cognitive biases on teachers' decisions. Additionally, we explore sociodemographic and behavioral factors associated with harsher repetition tendencies, including burnout levels, teaching experience, and institutional characteristics.

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation

Alfonso, Antonio et al. 2025. "Exploring teacher’s repetition biases with a survey experiment." AEA RCT Registry. March 21. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.15120-1.0

Sponsors & Partners

Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

We encourage the reader to go directly to the pdf attached to this registration ("Experimental description and analysis plan.pdf") where everything is laid out clearly and with detail.

This is a one stage experiment, meaning that teachers are only contacted once. The intervention requires access through a link compatible for both mobile and desktop that will be sent by email to all teachers by the regional government.
It is worth noting that the teachers will be asked to answer two surveys, one before the experiment and one after its completion. The total estimated time of completion is of 18 minutes.

Teachers can close the survey and open it again after days and their answers will be saved. Once they are done, they cannot answer again from the same device and browser.

Intervention (Hidden)

Intervention Start Date

2025-03-17

Intervention End Date

2025-04-04

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

Teacher's hardness level contextualized by peers' decisions.

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

We encourage the reader to go directly to the pdf attached to this registration ("Experimental description and analysis plan.pdf") where everything is laid out clearly and with detail.
We consider two main outcomes:
Average deviation: as more than one teacher is going to face the same hypothetical student, this measure compares the decisions of the teacher with those of the rest, meaning that if 60% of other teachers fail a student, and this one does not, this one is -0.6 hard. The average of this comparison for all 8 cards is what gives the final score for the teacher.

The other outcome is similar, but in this case we do not use the share of repetitions of the card, but the estimated probability of that card failing by a logit model. We estimate a logit model based on the characteristics of the card and get a predicted probability of that card being failed. The deviation of the teacher with this probability will determine their level of harshness.

Then, both measures belong to [-1,1]

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

We encourage the reader to go directly to the pdf attached to this registration ("Experimental description and analysis plan.pdf") where everything is laid out clearly and with detail.

Teachers will be asked to answer two surveys, one before the experiment and one after its completion. The total estimated time of completion is of 18 minutes.

The first survey asks sociodemographical questions as well as questions about the school the teacher works for (questions shown in the pdf document). The second survey asks behavioral questions that allow us to explore things like self-perceived empathy levels or confidence in meritocracy or the educational system.

The experiment works as following:
Teachers are presented with different student profiles (according to 6 binary characteristics) and asked if the student should repeat grade or not. They repeat the task 8 times (8 students). We name this device as the repetition task or ‘cards game’, and it allows us to estimate the
harshness level of the teacher by comparing their decisions with those of the rest of the sample. This simple setting is presented for the control group.
In the treatment groups, teachers are randomly assigned to education systems (1 of 3 policies) before or after making the repetition task. They are also asked to rank the policies as favorite, neither-favorite-nor-least-favorite and least favorite (hereafter F/∼/LF).
Therefore, there are 3 elements to this experiment: The repetition task, the 2 educational policy (3 scenarios) and the ranking over policies (F/∼/LF).

There are 4 groups. The control group and 3 different treatments.

Group I: Control Group. Teachers fill the repetition task and then select their preferences over the policies.

Group II: Policy treatment. Teachers are randomly assigned to one of the 3 policies. Then, they are asked to complete the repetition task. Finally, they choose their preferences over the policies

Group III: Revelation Treatment. Teachers are asked to fill their preferences first, and then they are randomly assigned to a policy. Finally, they fill the cards with the repetition task.

Group IV: Awareness Treatment. This treatment is identical to the revelation one with an additional (randomly assigned) priming sentence: ‘this is your F/∼/LF policy’.

Experimental Design Details

Randomization Method

Randomization by qualtrics

Randomization Unit

There are no clusters of randomization.

Was the treatment clustered?

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters

We have no estimates for the number of schools, but we will cluster at the school level.

Sample size: planned number of observations

Between 2500-7800 teachers

Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms

We consider 10 treatment arms with equal probabilities, thus we expect around 250 to 780 teachers in each arm

Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)

We range from 0.24 SD if we have n=2500, and 0.14 if n=7500

Supporting Documents and Materials

Documents

Document Name

IRB proposal document

Document Type

irb_protocol

Document Description

This is the document sent to the ethical department at Universidad Carlos III to obtain the IRB approval.

File

IRB proposal document

MD5: a9b3a5a61e14b7690c8c5bf301dcbe96

SHA1: 761d6f9548b9d08dbae51bc9b8c64947cfdb3fed

Uploaded At: March 16, 2025

Document Name

IRB acknowledgement of receipt

Document Type

irb_protocol

Document Description

This is the email sent by Universidad Carlos III to confirm they had received the IRB application before the survey started. Since at the moment of submitting the pre-registration, we have not obtained an answer, this is what we can offer for now. When the approval is received, we will make sure to attach it.

File

IRB acknowledgement of receipt

MD5: 424e2abf9fbac893b78597d3efe60c4c

SHA1: 844e6ef7f423b2cd4787927233fde10cc6244d77

Uploaded At: March 16, 2025

IRB