School choice with incomplete preferences

Last registered on April 22, 2025
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
School choice with incomplete preferences
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0015812
Initial registration date
April 15, 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 22, 2025, 9:37 AM EDT

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

Locations

Country
United States of America
Region

Primary Investigator

Name
Siru Liu
Affiliation
Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

Additional Trial Information

Status
On going
Start date
2025-04-14
End date
2025-05-15
Keywords
Behavior, Education
Additional Keywords
JEL code(s)
C92 C78 I20
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
Current school choice models, such as the student-proposing Deferred Acceptance (DA) and the Top Trading Cycle (TTC) mechanisms, require students to submit ranked lists of schools. This study introduces a novel preference elicitation method that allows students to express indecision between schools through pairwise comparisons. I develop a method for completing the matching process when students report incomplete preferences and use lab experiments to study the welfare outcomes.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Liu, Siru. 2025. "School choice with incomplete preferences." AEA RCT Registry. April 22. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.15812-1.0
Sponsors & Partners

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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
The intervention in this experiment consists of two matching mechanisms and the option for subjects to express indecision in school matching tasks.
Stage 1: Subjects will be asked three questions to compare three schools pairwisely.
Stage 2: In each treatment, subjects will be randomly assigned to groups of three, and answer the school comparison questions again to complete the school matching tasks.
Intervention (Hidden)
Intervention Start Date
2025-04-14
Intervention End Date
2025-05-15

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Students' answers to school comparison questions in both stages, and the stability and efficiency in matching results.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
This experiment design varies the mechanisms and indecision expression. The two mechanisms being studied are the DA and TTC mechanisms, while indecision expression is whether subjects are given the option "cannot compare the two" in school comparison questions. Each experiment session consists of two parts: Part 1 elicits subjects’ preferences for schools; Part 2 contains four treatments of school choice decisions: DA-O, DA-P, TTC-O and TTC-P.
Part 1 is the same in all experiment sessions, including two rounds of pairwise comparisons of three schools. In each round, subjects will be shown a school payoff table and asked three questions to compare schools. The purpose of Part 1 is to elicit subjects’ preferences on school pairs for welfare analysis.
Part 2 includes multiple rounds of school choice decisions. In the first half rounds, each student’s school payoff table is the same as the table in the first round in Part 1; in the second half rounds, each student’s school payoff table is the same as the table in the second round in Part 1. In each round of school choice decision, students are randomly grouped into three. There are three schools and three students in each group. Schools’ priority information is shared with all students in the group. Prior to making school choice decisions, students will be informed about the matching algorithm and provided with an example for clarity.
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
Recruiting emails are randomly sent to undergraduate students who registered with the experimental economics center at Georgia State University. And subjects are randomly assigned to a treatment at the beginning of each experiment session.
Randomization Unit
Experiment sessions
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
About 12 experiment sessions
Sample size: planned number of observations
About 300 undergraduate subjects
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
About 66 undergraduate subjects per treatment
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Georgia State University Institutional Review Board
IRB Approval Date
2025-03-20
IRB Approval Number
H25526
Analysis Plan

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
No
Data Collection Complete
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials