SEED 2.0 - RCT at Scale

Last registered on April 30, 2025

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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title

SEED 2.0 - RCT at Scale

RCT ID

AEARCTR-0015810

Initial registration date

April 25, 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

April 30, 2025, 9:30 AM EDT

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

Laura Chioda

Affiliation

UC Berkeley

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Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name

Paul Gertler

PI Affiliation

UC Berkeley

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Additional Trial Information

Status

In development

Start date

2025-03-08

End date

2028-06-15

Keywords

Behavior, Education, Firms & Productivity, Gender, Labor

Additional Keywords

JEL code(s)

Secondary IDs

Prior work

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

Abstract

The at-scale Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) involving 8,500 Ugandan youth will generate rigorous evidence on impacts at scale of a tested and innovative youth skills and entrepreneurship training, Skills for Effective Entrepreneurship Development (SEED). The at-scale RCT aims at gaining insights on the continued effectiveness of SEED at-scale and the added value of including a digital business skills module in combination with a Generative AI tool. The SEED-tailored AI-powered virtual tutor will be available during training and as youth embark on their entrepreneurial journeys.
SEED is a 3-week in-residence mini-MBA program that was first implemented as an RCT in 2013 (by UC Berkeley), targeting youth at the end of secondary school (S6), which is earlier in life than traditional training and a critical stage for the skills development. Four years post-intervention, youth in the treatment group were more likely to start enterprises and more successful in ensuring business survival. Ten years post-intervention, a very conservative measure of the present discounted value of SEED-induced extra business earnings. The SEED intervention and its scale-up speak to a pressing policy priority. Entrepreneurship is vital for job creation and economic growth, especially in Africa, with governments investing heavily in programs designed to expand entrepreneurial skills and spending over US $1 billion annually on entrepreneurship training (McKenzie 2021). T

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation

Chioda, Laura and Paul Gertler. 2025. "SEED 2.0 - RCT at Scale ." AEA RCT Registry. April 30. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.15810-1.0

Sponsors & Partners

Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

The an at-scale Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) involving ~8,500 Ugandan youth will generate rigorous evidence on impacts at scale of a tested and innovative youth skills and entrepreneurship training, Skills for Effective Entrepreneurship Development (SEED). The at-scale RCT aims at gaining insights on the continued effectiveness of SEED at-scale and the added value of including a digital business skills module in combination with a Generative AI tool. The SEED-tailored AI-powered virtual tutor will be available during training and as youth embark on their entrepreneurial journeys.
SEED is a 3-week in-residence mini-MBA program that was first implemented as an RCT in 2013, targeting youth at the end of secondary school (S6), which is earlier in life than traditional training and a critical stage for the skills development. Key elements of SEED that yielded large and sustained effects 10 years post-intervention are preserved and offer confidence for its future success. SEED was designed/implemented as a high-quality intervention. The curriculum was informed by rigorous economics and psychology evidence; it targeted youth at the end of secondary school (S6), which is earlier in life than traditional trainings. SEED was designed to promote active, participatory learning.

Intervention Start Date

2025-05-03

Intervention End Date

2025-05-25

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

- Hard and soft skills upgrading (knowledge tests; task-based measures; socio-emotional and personality traits)
- Education investments (e.g., post-secondary education, field of study). Note in the original SEED, no trade-offs were observed between entrepreneurial effort/success and educational investments.
- Business starts, active businesses, and entrepreneurial experience
- Business characteristics (formality, employment, number of employees, partnerships, access to finance, etc.)
- Managerial practices and tech adoption, including businesses’ online presence
- Businesses’ financial performance (revenues, capital)
- Earnings (business earnings, wage earnings, total earnings)

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

- Soft-Skills and Personality Traits: As in the past, we plan on including a battery of soft-skills and personality trait scales(Big Five, grit, self-efficacy, prosociality, and mental health measures (GAD/PHQ), but we hope to validate soft-skills via task-based measures, as well as lab-in-the-field experiments).
- Comprehensive measures of well-being (anxiety, depression, expectations)
- Social spillovers: fertility, intimate partner violence, gender norms, gender-empowerment.

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Study Design. 8,500 youth from a nationally representative, gender-stratified sample will be randomly assigned as follows:
● Treatment 1 (T1): 2,853 S6 youth, residential SEED (~3 weeks)
● Treatment 2 (T2): 2,853 S6 youth, residential SEED + Digital and AI tool (~3 weeks)
● Control Group (C): 2,853 S6 youth

Additional stratification dimensions will include (i) geographical areas, capturing youth that can be served by the program to reach adequate, cost-effective operational-scale for implementation; and (ii) distance from the expected venues to which youth will be assigned. Namely, youth will be assigned to two distance-bands: 0-30km and 30-60km.

Experimental Design Details

Not available

Randomization Method

Computer

Randomization Unit

Individual.

Was the treatment clustered?

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters

Sample size: planned number of observations

8,500 youth

Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms

Treatment 1 (T1): 2,853 S6 youth, residential SEED (~3 weeks)
● Treatment 2 (T2): 2,853 S6 youth, residential SEED + Digital and AI tool (~3 weeks)
● Control Group (C): 2,853 S6 youth

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

~(0.07sd-0.10sd, with take up of 75%)

Supporting Documents and Materials

IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name

University of California

IRB Approval Date

2025-03-03

IRB Approval Number

Protocol # 2024-09-17776

Analysis Plan