Experimental Design
1. Experiment Chronology
AFF, the collaborating NGO, hired full- (eight hours per day) and part-time (four hours per day) female data entry clerks in their catchment area. AFF distributed job flyers to women with high school diploma during a census of approximately 22,000 households in the catchment area from May to July 2016. Part-time job opportunities were given to randomly selected 35 villages and full-time opportunity to the remaining 36 villages. Flyers provide information on the job description, working conditions including part- or full-time work, and expected salaries and benefits. A resume and a copy of high school graduation exam report were required to apply for both types of jobs. The total number of preliminary applicants was 456. From December 19 to 31, 2016, 333 job applicants participated in a baseline job survey which measures demographics, educational background, employment history, household income and assets, job preferences and motivation, personality, cognitive skills (clerical and computation abilities), fine motor ability, and basic computer skills.
Among those who completed the baseline job survey, 122 applicants joined three-week long training sessions in August to December 2017 as interns, which entails basic computer training (such as Excel), specifics of data entry work, and tests. Also, interns practiced data entry at least for an hour every day.
2. Data
The primary data sources are (1) census data including household demographic and socioeconomic information, (2) administrative data used to select data entry clerks including the baseline job survey and training outcomes, and (3) data on job performance including labor productivity and attendance rates.
The census covers approximately 22,000 households in the catchment area, where the job flyers have been distributed. The census has collected a variety of socioeconomic, health, psychological variables. This project uses key household characteristics such as the number of children, marital status, intra-household dynamics, and household income to examine the characteristics of workers who select into part-time (relative to full-time) jobs.
The baseline job survey collected information on demographics, educational background, employment history, household income and assets, job preferences, attitudes and expectations toward work, and cognitive skills (measuring clerical and computation abilities). Fine motor ability and basic computer skills will be also measured.
Data on workers’ performance at the data-entry firm were collected by AFF from August to December 2017. Data collection on job performance began from training sessions. During the training, AFF collected training performance such as quiz score to measure understanding of the computer program, and quantity and quality of data entry output. Also AFF collected information on labor productivity at work. Data entered by each clerk were automatically stored on a central server from individual laptop computers.