Perceptions About Working Mothers In Australia

Last registered on October 08, 2025

View Trial History

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title

Perceptions About Working Mothers In Australia

RCT ID

AEARCTR-0016507

Initial registration date

August 07, 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

August 08, 2025, 8:33 AM EDT

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

Last updated

October 08, 2025, 1:02 AM EDT

Last updated is the most recent time when changes to the trial's registration were published.

Locations

Country

Australia

Region

Australia Wide - All States & Territories

Primary Investigator

Name

Elif Incekara Hafalir

Affiliation

University of Technology Sydney

Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name

Melina Savvas

PI Affiliation

University of Technology Sydney

Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status

In development

Start date

2025-08-31

End date

2025-12-31

Keywords

Behavior, Gender, Labor

Additional Keywords

Perceptions, Misperceptions, Related Beliefs, Unrelated Beliefs, Information Treatment

JEL code(s)

Secondary IDs

Prior work

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

Abstract

This study aims to build upon a previous studies looking at the effects of social norms on women working [Alkhuzam et al., 2023; Bursztyn et al., 2020; Cortés et al., 2022].

Social norms influence individual opinions and behaviours, acting as a reference point when making decisions. Like in much of the world, women remain the dominate providers of childcare in Australia, despite increases in gender equity across other aspects of life. We conduct a study in which individuals’ first and second-order beliefs are elicited, to gauge support for working mothers. First order beliefs are used to infer the social norms, and second order beliefs are used to infer peoples’ belief on these social norms. Our objective is to see whether there are misperceptions of social norms and whether there are gender and SES differences in beliefs. We also aim to understand whether providing participants, who misperceive the social norms, with accurate information about their peers’ opinions can shift individual attitudes towards working mothers. Furthermore, we aim to see whether information treatment has an impact on untargeted related and unrelated beliefs.

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation

Incekara Hafalir, Elif and Melina Savvas. 2025. "Perceptions About Working Mothers In Australia ." AEA RCT Registry. October 08. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.16507-2.0

Sponsors & Partners

Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

Our experiment has two stages. In the first stage, we will collect baseline data on beliefs. In the second stage, there will be a control condition and a treatment condition. Using a between-subject design, half of the survey participants, in the second stage, are exposed to treatment.

Intervention (Hidden)

Our experiment in the second stage is a between-subject design.
1) Control: participants are asked to complete the survey (elicitation tasks) in a standard fashion with no information treatment.
2) Treatment: Participants will receive treatment information. In this treatment, participants are provided with information (belief updating) about their peers’ responses (individuals of the same gender) to the same questions in an earlier survey round. Treatment information will be given in two different frames: one is by reporting the share of others suggesting mothers taking time off to care for a preschool child and the other is by reporting the share of others suggesting fathers taking time off to care for a preschool child. Note that it is the smae information treatment by framed differently.

Intervention Start Date

2025-10-10

Intervention End Date

2025-12-31

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

1. Participants' suggestions for whether mother or father to take time off to care for a preschool child.
2. Donation amounts to the charity called Fitted for Work, whose aim is to empower disadvantaged women to achieve economic independence through sustainable work by providing job finding/preparation services.
3. Untargeted related and unrelated beliefs.

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

1. participants' suggestions will be from three different questions. We will analyze them sepearately and also by taking the average of them.
2. donation amounts will be compared in terms of whether any positive amount given, as well as averages and distributions.
3. we will compare the averages and the distributions of beliefs on related and unrelated beliefs questions

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

the outcomes by gender and SES

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Participants aged between 18 and 35 are recruited to complete our online experiment (developed through Qualtrics and completed on Prolific). This experiment is conducted as a two-stage online survey. In our survey, participants are asked to read a vignette scenario and guess the responses of other females and males living in their area and also provide their own recommendation to the questions presented. In the second survey, half of the participants will be randomly chosen to receive treatment information.

Experimental Design Details

There are two stages. In the first stage, we will collect information about baseline beliefs.

In the second stage, participants are randomised into either the control or treatment group.

Both surveys begins with asking for participants gender and their state/territory of residence. Participants are then asked to read a vignette scenario about two working parents with a three-year-old child, who is currently in bad-quality childcare. The parents believe one of them should reduce their working hours to help with childcare each week until the child begins primary school. Participants are asked to guess what percentage of other females and males would recommend the mother take time off when she earns 50% less, the same, and 50% more than the father. Next, participants are asked for their own recommendation with the same wage differentials. We then ask participants an attention check question, which if failed, will result in their response being removed from our analysis. Participants then complete demographic questions.

In the second survey round, participants in the treatment group are provided with the information before asking for their own recommendation (information about how others answered the same question that they are asked). Additionally, the control and treatment vignette blocks will have two alternative in this round. One will be completely phrased for the participants recommendations (and for the treatment information) regarding the mother (e.g. provide your percent recommendation the mother take time off) and the other will be phrased for recommendations (and for the treatment information) regarding the father (e.g. provide your percent recommendation the father take time off). This has been done to understand how the framing for the treatment information will affect the results. All elements will be evenly presented. Furthermore, only participants from New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria will be eligible to take part in the second survey round, as we were unable to collect a sufficient number of observations for other states/territories in the first survey round.

In both stages, participants complete a series of related and unrelated beliefs questions, asking for their agreement with the given statements, their guess of other Australians opinions and their confidence in their guesses. These related and unrelated beliefs questions have been sourced from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey (HILDA).

Our objective is to see whether providing an information treatment will shift individual attitudes compared to the control group, and whether the framing of the same information matter. We are also interested in seeing whether this information treatment has a spillover/backfiring effect on related and unrelated beliefs.

Randomization Method

Randomisation done by a computer

Randomization Unit

Individual

Was the treatment clustered?

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters

200 individuals in the first stage. The second stage numbers will be determined based on the first stage data and the preregistration will be updated before data collection in the second stage.

Sample size: planned number of observations

200 individuals in the first round. The second stage numbers will be determined based on the first stage data and the preregistration will be updated before data collection in the second stage.

Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms

400 individuals in the second round. 200 in control and 200 in treatment. In each arm, half of subjects will see the questions (and treatment information if they are in the treatment) phrased from mother's point of view (e.g. provide your percent recommendation the mother take time off) and the other half will see the questions phrased from father's point of view (e.g. provide your percent recommendation the father take time off).
-100 in mother frame control
-100 in father frame control
-100 in mother frame treatment
-100 in father frame treatment

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

We have the following parameter for the power calculations of the second stage based on the first stage results: Sigma = 0.05 Two sided test t-test 200 in each condition σ = 25.60119 Control mean = 12.8 We have 0.9988 power to detect medium size effect (d=0.5) and 0.5141 power to detect a small size effect (d=0.2).

Supporting Documents and Materials

IRB