Parenting styles: the Role of Beliefs, Preferences, and Constraints (ORIGPARENT)

Respondents will be read different hypothetical scenarios that describe a family with an adolescent. Scripts also include the parenting style, and other inputs for child development. See pre-analysis plan for full script of the experiment.

See pre-analysis plan for full script of the experiment.

2025-01-27

2025-04-30

Caregiver beliefs on effectiveness of inputs (time spent with child, initial skills) for child's later-life outcomes (income, support for the family) for authoritarian and authoritative parenting styles. Caregivers advice on how to allocate time to parenting and other tasks, and which parenting style to use in hypothetical scenarios.

Primary outcomes will be measured using hypothetical scenarios describing adolescents and the inputs they received, where respondents are asked to formulate their estimation of the adolescent's future income and likelihood of support for the family. For time allocation and parenting style choice, parents will receive a scenario with time amount available and be asked to advice how to allocate time and recommend a parenting style.

None.

N/A.

Lab-in-the-field experiment - we will assign respondents into four treatments. For the belief scenarios, each of the four treatment arms consists of a short description about a hypothetical adolescent child and her parents, and is followed by a set of described situations with different child development inputs. Two treatment arms will get a fixed description of the adolescent's initial skills (high and low skill depending on the arm) with variations in parental time investments and parenting styles. The other two treatment arms will receive a fixed description of parental time investments (high and low depending on the arm), with variations in initial adolescent skills and parenting styles.
Each respondent will answer:
- Belief scenarios: Hypothetical scenarios about adolescents that vary in inputs such as parenting styles, and time investments or initial skill levels of children (depending on the arm). Caregivers are asked to indicate their expectations about future outcomes of the described adolescents.
- Cost scenarios: Hypothetical situations with trade-offs between parenting time and non-parenting activities, designed to elicit preferences and constraints. In the situations, the time amount available to a hypothetical caregiver will vary and they will be described in a typical interaction with the child. Respondents are asked to advice the other caregivers on how to split time between time with the adolescent and other task depending on the time available. Further they are to advice on how to respond to the particular situation with the child (i.e., which parenting style to exert).
See the pre-analysis plan for the complete description.

Lab-in-the-field experiment - we will assign respondents into four treatments. For the belief scenarios, each of the four treatment arms consists of a short description about a hypothetical adolescent child and her parents, and is followed by a set of described situations with different child development inputs. Two treatment arms will get a fixed description of the adolescent's initial skills (high and low skill depending on the arm) with variations in parental time investments and parenting styles. The other two treatment arms will receive a fixed description of parental time investments (high and low depending on the arm), with variations in initial adolescent skills and parenting styles.
Each respondent will answer:
- Belief scenarios: Hypothetical scenarios about adolescents that vary in inputs such as parenting styles, and time investments or initial skill levels of children (depending on the arm). Caregivers are asked to indicate their expectations about future outcomes of the described adolescents.
- Cost scenarios: Hypothetical situations with trade-offs between parenting time and non-parenting activities, designed to elicit preferences and constraints. In the situations, the time amount available to a hypothetical caregiver will vary and they will be described in a typical interaction with the child. Respondents are asked to advice the other caregivers on how to split time between time with the adolescent and other task depending on the time available. Further they are to advice on how to respond to the particular situation with the child (i.e., which parenting style to exert).
See the pre-analysis plan for the complete description.

The randomization method will be implemented through a STATA do-file to ensure that the randomization is reproducible.

The unit of randomization will be the individual subject (parent).

No

~2,400 parents (no clustering).

~2,400 parents.

The four different descriptions will be randomly assigned to the sample, leading to 600 respondents by treatment arm.

To simulate minimum detectable effect sizes, we use the pilot of the lab-in-the-field experiment with a sample of 33 parents who have similar characteristics to our target sample. Given the limited size of this sample, as well as the initial wording of questions and procedures used in the pilot (which was later improved and refined), this data is expected to be noisier than our target sample. To estimate the minimum detectable effect size, we simulate effect sizes for the main specification (Equation 4) aiming for 80% power with our target sample of 2,400 respondents. Our approach follows Campos-Mercade (2024). To do so, we use the mean and standard deviation of log earnings in the pilot data as the dependent variable. According to these simulations, for βp, the productivity of time investments, we are positioned to detect parameter sizes bigger than 0.045 SD (0.059 SD when clustering at the individual level) of the outcome variable (log earnings). With the pilot data variation, this estimate corresponds to a face value of 0.07 (0.09) for βp, corresponding to a minimum detectable increase of 0.07% (0.09%) in log earnings for a 1% increase in time investments. For γp, the productivity of child initial skills, we are positioned to detect parameters bigger than 0.105 SD (0.135 SD when clustering at the individual level), with a face value of 0.17 (0.21), corresponding to a minimum detectable increase of 0.17% (0.21%) in log earnings for a 1% increase in initial skills.

Pre-analysis plan