Adjusting the Points Based Activation System (PBAS) points target

Last registered on February 25, 2025
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Adjusting the Points Based Activation System (PBAS) points target
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0015437
Initial registration date
February 24, 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
February 25, 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
Bilal Rafi
Affiliation
Department of Employment and Workplace Relations
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Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Scott Copley
PI Affiliation
Australian Centre for Evaluation (ACE) - The Treasury
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PI Name
Bruce Cunningham
PI Affiliation
Department of Employment and Workplace Relations
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Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2025-02-27
End date
2026-07-31
Keywords
Labor, Other
Additional Keywords
Employment Services, Employment Policy, Active Labour Market Policies
JEL code(s)
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
Workforce Australia Online, administered by the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations (DEWR), supports job-ready jobseekers to access online tools, information and training to help them move into employment.

Mutual obligation requirements are a key component of Workforce Australia Online. They are designed to ensure that individuals who are receiving income support are actively looking for work and are participating in activities that will help them into employment. Mutual obligation requirements have an impact on how quickly jobseekers find work. However, there is little high-quality evidence in an Australian context, and no randomised control trial evidence on the impact of varying the amount of mutual obligation requirements on employment outcomes.

The aim of the trial is to test the impact of reducing the PBAS points target and job search requirements, effectively reducing mutual obligations, on employment outcomes of Workforce Australia Online participants.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Copley, Scott, Bruce Cunningham and Bilal Rafi. 2025. "Adjusting the Points Based Activation System (PBAS) points target." AEA RCT Registry. February 25. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.15437-1.0
Sponsors & Partners

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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
This will be a three arm, parallel groups, pragmatic randomised trial, with a control group and two treatment groups. Workforce Australia Online participants in both treatment arms will receive a reduction in their mutual obligations, with the magnitude of this reduction varying across arms. Control group participants will experience usual mutual obligations settings.

The trial is voluntary, and participants will be able to opt-out at any time and for any reason without any impact on their level of service or income support payment.
Intervention Start Date
2025-02-27
Intervention End Date
2025-11-30

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
The primary outcome measures the total number of weeks that participants are employed by 6-months (26-weeks) after enrolment in the trial.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
The data for the primary outcome will be sourced from de-identified Single Touch Payroll (STP) data collected by the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) and accessed via the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Person Level Integrated Data Asset (PLIDA).

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
Mutual obligation reductions will be implemented automatically upon enrolment in the trial by providing a PBAS points credit and a reduction in the minimum job search requirement. The control group will retain standard mutual obligation requirements.
Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
Simple computer randomisation with equal assignment weight for each arm.
Randomization Unit
Individual
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
0
Sample size: planned number of observations
30,000 participants
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
10,000 participants per arm
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Our design achieves our target power of 90% when the true effect of the intervention is an average increase of 0.7 weeks of employment. An increase of 0.7 weeks, while a small aggregate effect, would be an effect size of substantive policy interest. This is because the intervention is very low cost, where even equivalence would be considered a positive outcome (obligations can be decreased without impacting employment outcomes).
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Macquarie University - Humanities and Social Sciences (HASS) Human Research Ethics Commitee (HREC)
IRB Approval Date
2024-08-01
IRB Approval Number
Protocol Number 16489
Analysis Plan

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