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Abstract
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A growing body of evidence demonstrates that laws and institutions shape social norms — not only through enforcement but through their signalling function: communicating what is socially acceptable and legitimising or delegitimising group identities in the public sphere. This signalling effect is theorised to be especially powerful when institutional signals are reinforced by religious authority, yet causal evidence from low-institutional-legitimacy, high-religious-salience contexts remains scarce. In contexts such as Pakistan, where the credibility of secular state institutions is constrained and Islamic authority operates as the primary mechanism of norm legitimation, understanding how religious framing modulates the effect of institutional signals on public behaviour is both theoretically important and practically urgent.
This study provides the first large-scale randomised experimental test of this mechanism, exploiting the live and unresolved legal context of Pakistan's Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act 2018 — currently under Supreme Court review following its partial annulment by the Federal Shariat Court on Islamic grounds in 2023. Approximately 3,500 adults, drawn from a density-stratified, population-representative sample of urban Lahore, are randomly assigned to one of five conditions: a control condition receiving no institutional signal, or one of four vignette treatments describing an anticipated Supreme Court ruling either upholding or annulling the Act, with or without explicit religious framing drawn from real institutional discourse — the Council of Islamic Ideology's prior endorsement of the Act as consistent with Islamic principles, or the Federal Shariat Court's Quranic jurisprudential reasoning against it.
The study measures whether and how these signals shift: perceived descriptive and injunctive social norms regarding transgender inclusion; personal attitudes toward transgender individuals across social, economic, and educational domains; pluralistic ignorance — the gap between personal attitudes and perceived social norms; labour market perceptions including perceived employability of transgender individuals; and real behavioural outcomes including incentivised donation allocation, voluntary enrolment in transgender-staffed household and tutoring services, and willingness to publicly associate with transgender inclusion through information sharing.
A difference-in-differences/ANCOVA design on pre- and post-treatment institutional trust measures tests whether judicial signals shift the very legitimacy of the institutions sending them, alongside a parallel measure of the gap between personal and perceived-community trust in the Supreme Court, included as a validity check on social desirability bias given the study's implementation through a government-affiliated fieldwork partner. Heterogeneity analysis examines whether religious framing amplifies institutional signals differentially for high-religiosity respondents, whether this amplification is symmetric across inclusive and exclusionary signals, and whether prior knowledge of the Act moderates treatment effects through belief updating.
The study contributes to three literatures: the economics of social norm formation and institutional signalling; the political economy of religion and governance in Muslim-majority societies; and the economics of discrimination and labour market exclusion of stigmatised minorities. Findings have direct policy relevance for the design of judicial communication strategies, civil society advocacy, and inclusion programming in contexts where conventional rights-based institutional legitimacy is weak and religious authority functions as the primary vehicle for norm change.
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After
Here's the complete, final abstract — all five paragraphs assembled, with the three fixes applied and everything else left exactly as it was since it didn't need changing.
A growing body of evidence demonstrates that laws and institutions shape social norms — not only through enforcement but through their signalling function: communicating what is socially acceptable and legitimising or delegitimising group identities in the public sphere. This signalling effect is theorised to be especially powerful when institutional signals are reinforced by religious authority, yet causal evidence from low-institutional-legitimacy, high-religious-salience contexts remains scarce. In contexts such as Pakistan, where the credibility of secular state institutions is constrained and Islamic authority operates as the primary mechanism of norm legitimation, understanding how religious framing modulates the effect of institutional signals on public behaviour is both theoretically important and practically urgent.
This study provides the first large-scale randomised experimental test of this mechanism, exploiting the live and unresolved legal context of Pakistan's Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act 2018 — currently under Supreme Court review following its partial annulment by the Federal Shariat Court on Islamic grounds in 2023. Approximately 3,500 adults, drawn from a probability-proportional-to-size, population-representative sample of urban Lahore, are randomly assigned to one of five conditions: a control condition receiving no institutional signal, or one of four vignette treatments describing an anticipated Supreme Court ruling either upholding or annulling the Act, with or without explicit religious framing grounded in Islamic principles of justice, compassion, and prevention of oppression, and direct citation of Quranic and Sunnah teachings — reflecting the same reasoning register used in the Federal Shariat Court's own 2023 ruling against the Act and in the Coincil of Islamic Ideolody's endorsement of the Act in 2018.
The study measures whether and how these signals shift: perceived descriptive and injunctive social norms regarding transgender inclusion; personal attitudes toward transgender individuals across social, economic, and educational domains; pluralistic ignorance — the gap between personal attitudes and perceived social norms; labour market perceptions including perceived employability of transgender individuals; and real behavioural outcomes including incentivised donation allocation, voluntary enrolment in transgender-staffed household and tutoring services, and willingness to publicly associate with transgender inclusion through information sharing.
A difference-in-differences/ANCOVA design on pre- and post-treatment institutional trust measures tests whether judicial signals shift the very legitimacy of the institutions sending them, alongside a parallel measure of the gap between personal and perceived-community trust in the Supreme Court, included as a validity check on social desirability bias given the general political sensitivity in Pakistan around expressing distrust of the judiciary to an unfamiliar interviewer. Heterogeneity analysis examines whether religious framing amplifies institutional signals differentially for high-religiosity respondents, whether this amplification is symmetric across inclusive and exclusionary signals, and whether prior knowledge of the Act moderates treatment effects through belief updating.
The study contributes to three literatures: the economics of social norm formation and institutional signalling; the political economy of religion and governance in Muslim-majority societies; and the economics of discrimination and labour market exclusion of stigmatised minorities. Findings have direct policy relevance for the design of judicial communication strategies, civil society advocacy, and inclusion programming in contexts where conventional rights-based institutional legitimacy is weak and religious authority functions as the primary vehicle for norm change.
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Last Published
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August 24, 2026 10:28 AM
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August 29, 2026 01:40 PM
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Intervention (Public)
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Before
Participants are randomly assigned to one of five experimental conditions with equal probability (0.20 each). All participants first complete a demographics and baseline moderators block measuring institutional trust, religiosity, social norm sensitivity, and prior contact with the transgender community.
The control condition (C) receives no information about the Supreme Court case. Four treatment conditions present participants with a vignette describing an anticipated Supreme Court ruling on the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act 2018:
T1 — Positive institutional signal without religious framing: the Supreme Court is expected to uphold the Act and maintain all existing protections for transgender individuals.
T2 — Negative institutional signal without religious framing: the Supreme Court is expected to strike down the Act and revoke existing protections.
T3 — Positive institutional signal with Islamic religious framing: same as T1, with additional framing citing Islamic principles of justice, compassion, and human dignity, consistent with Islamic teachings in the Holy Quran and Sunnah.
T4 — Negative institutional signal with Islamic religious framing: same as T2, with additional framing citing the Federal Shariat Court's 2023 reasoning that the Act contradicts Quranic injunctions on the divine fixity of gender, drawing on Surah An-Nisa 4:11-12.
All vignettes are read aloud by trained enumerators and are designed to reflect real institutional discourse previously used by Pakistani state and religious bodies. A manipulation check immediately following the vignette measures the perceived likelihood of the ruling to test vignette credibility. Outcome measures follow in the order: social norm perception, personal attitudes, behavioural measures, post-treatment institutional trust.
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After
Participants are randomly assigned to one of five experimental conditions with equal probability (0.20 each). All participants first complete a demographics and baseline moderators block measuring institutional trust, religiosity, social norm sensitivity, general social desirability response bias, and prior contact with the transgender community.
The control condition (C) receives no information about the Supreme Court case. Four treatment conditions present participants with a vignette describing an anticipated Supreme Court ruling on the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act 2018:
T1 — Positive institutional signal without religious framing: the Supreme Court is expected to uphold the Act and maintain all existing protections for transgender individuals.
T2 — Negative institutional signal without religious framing: the Supreme Court is expected to strike down the Act and revoke existing protections.
T3 — Positive institutional signal with Islamic religious framing: same as T1, with additional framing citing Islamic principles of justice (adl), compassion (rahmah), and prevention of oppression (zulm), grounded in the teachings of the Holy Quran (Surah An-Nahl 16:90) and the Sunnah.
T4 — Negative institutional signal with Islamic religious framing: same as T2, with additional framing reflecting the Federal Shariat Court's 2023 reasoning that the Act contradicts Quranic teaching on gender categories, drawing on Surah An-Nisa 4:11-12 and the Sunnah.
All vignettes are read aloud by trained enumerators and are designed to reflect real institutional discourse previously used by Pakistani state and religious bodies. A manipulation check immediately following the vignette measures the perceived likelihood of the ruling to test vignette credibility. Outcome measures follow in the order: social norm perception, personal attitudes, behavioural measures, post-treatment institutional trust.
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Primary Outcomes (End Points)
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Before
Perceived descriptive social norms index: mean response across eleven items measuring what most people in the respondent's area, or in Pakistan, are believed to feel or believe regarding social proximity, labour market inclusion, and educational inclusion of transgender individuals. Ten items use a 0–10 count-based response format ("out of 10 people in your area, how many...") and one item (measuring perceived national-level trend) uses a 5-point Likert scale, reflecting the difference in reference group scope.
Personal attitudes index: mean response across sixteen items measuring respondent's own comfort with and support for social proximity, labour market inclusion, and educational inclusion of transgender individuals (5-point agree/disagree scale).
Donation allocation: amount donated (PKR 0–150, in discrete increments of 0/10/20/50/100/150) from guaranteed participation payment to a transgender employment program.
Service enrolment — cleaning: binary indicator of whether the respondent signs up for free household cleaning and household help services delivered by trained transgender employees.
Service enrolment — tutoring: binary indicator of whether respondents with school-age children enrol in free tutoring services delivered by qualified transgender teachers (conditional on having school-age children in household).
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After
Perceived descriptive social norms index: mean response across eleven items measuring what most people in the respondent's area, or in Pakistan, are believed to feel or believe regarding social proximity, labour market inclusion, and educational inclusion of transgender individuals. Seven items (area-level reference group) use a 0–10 count-based response format ("out of 10 people in your area, how many..."); four items (measuring perceived national-level beliefs and trends) use a 5-point Likert scale, reflecting the difference in reference group scope.
Personal attitudes index: mean response across thirteen items measuring respondent's own comfort with and support for social proximity, labour market inclusion, and educational inclusion of transgender individuals (5-point agree/disagree scale).
Donation allocation: amount donated (PKR 0–150, in discrete increments of 0/10/20/50/100/150) from guaranteed participation payment to a transgender employment program.
Service enrolment — cleaning: binary indicator of whether the respondent signs up for free household cleaning and household help services delivered by trained transgender employees.
Service enrolment — tutoring: binary indicator of whether respondents with school-age children enrol in free tutoring services delivered by qualified transgender teachers (conditional on having school-age children in household).
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Experimental Design (Public)
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The study uses a between-subjects randomised vignette experiment embedded in a household survey. The design has five arms — one control and four treatments — with equal probability of assignment (0.20 per arm). Assignment is individual-level, implemented through the KoboToolbox survey instrument administered by trained enumerators on tablets during face-to-face household visits.
The four treatment conditions follow a 2x2 factorial structure crossing two dimensions: policy direction (positive ruling upholding the Transgender Persons Act versus negative ruling striking it down) and religious framing (absent versus present). The control condition receives no information about the Supreme Court case.
The survey flow is: demographics and baseline moderators (including pre-treatment institutional trust, perceived institutional trust, and religiosity measures) → prior knowledge questions → randomisation → vignette or control → manipulation check → outcome measures (social norm perception, personal attitudes, behavioural measures) → post-treatment institutional trust measures.
Household sampling uses a density-stratified sampling frame across 68 Union Councils in urban Lahore. UC-level population density (WorldPop 2025, 100-metre resolution) was used to classify each UC into one of two sampling procedures based on an empirically-derived threshold of 10,900 persons per km². For UCs at or above this threshold (47 of 68), reflecting sufficiently dense residential development, starting points were generated via simple random sampling within the UC boundary polygon. For UCs below this threshold (21 of 68), where administrative "Urban" classification was found to include substantial non-residential land, starting points were generated via constrained random sampling within a 150-metre radius of satellite-imagery-verified residential reference points (three per UC), sampled without replacement to preserve spatial diversity. Five starting points were generated per UC (ten for two double-weighted UCs), for 350 starting points in total. From each starting point, enumerators follow a systematic right-hand-rule walk protocol, approaching every third household, with a defined substitution protocol for non-response and a single callback permitted before substitution. Within each household, one adult is randomly selected using a random draw generated within the survey software.
Independently of treatment assignment, respondents are randomly assigned to one of two response elicitation modes for all scale-based items (10% verbal, 90% non-verbal card-based response), included as a measurement validity check and not crossed with treatment arm in the analysis of primary outcomes.
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After
The study uses a between-subjects randomised vignette experiment embedded in a household survey. The design has five arms — one control and four treatments — with equal probability of assignment (0.20 per arm). Assignment is individual-level, implemented through the KoboToolbox survey instrument administered by trained enumerators on tablets during face-to-face household visits.
The four treatment conditions follow a 2x2 factorial structure crossing two dimensions: policy direction (positive ruling upholding the Transgender Persons Act versus negative ruling striking it down) and religious framing (absent versus present). The control condition receives no information about the Supreme Court case.
The survey flow is: demographics and baseline moderators (including pre-treatment institutional trust, perceived institutional trust, religiosity, and general social desirability response tendency) → prior knowledge questions → randomisation → vignette or control → manipulation check → outcome measures (social norm perception, personal attitudes, behavioural measures) → post-treatment institutional trust measures.
Household sampling uses a population-weighted sampling frame across 68 Union Councils in urban Lahore. Within each sampled UC, gridded population data (WorldPop 2025, 100-metre resolution) is used to select starting points via probability-proportional-to-size sampling without replacement, weighted by each grid cell's estimated population, with a small random offset applied within each selected cell. Five starting points are generated per UC (ten for the two double-weighted UCs), for 350 starting points in total. From each starting point, enumerators follow a systematic right-hand-rule walk protocol, approaching every third household. Non-response at a given position in the walk sequence triggers a bounded substitution attempt (the immediately preceding household, then the immediately following household, maximum two attempts) before the systematic sequence resumes; unavailable respondents (rather than outright refusals) are offered a same-day callback at a different time, followed by a different-day callback if the first is unsuccessful, before substitution is applied. Enumerators continue sampling further along the same systematic sequence at a given starting point, as needed, until ten quality-assurance-valid interviews are achieved at that point, rather than working to a fixed pre-calculated number of approaches per point. Within each household, one adult is randomly selected using a random draw generated within the survey software.
Independently of treatment assignment, respondents are randomly assigned to one of two response elicitation modes for all scale-based items (10% verbal, 90% non-verbal card-based response), included as a measurement validity check and not crossed with treatment arm in the analysis of primary outcomes.
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Planned Number of Observations
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3,500 individual adult respondents is the target completed and QA-valid analysed sample. Household-level non-response (refusal to participate at the point of contact) is addressed in real time through the field substitution protocol described under Experimental Design, and does not directly enter this calculation. Separately, based on an anticipated post-hoc quality-assurance invalidation rate of approximately 20% — covering interviews terminated before completion, failed telephone back-checks, or surveys flagged during audio review — enumerators will aim to complete approximately 13 field interviews per starting point (rather than the nominal 10) across 350 starting points, in order to net 10 QA-valid interviews per point and reach the target of 3,500 valid observations overall. If the realised invalidation rate is lower than anticipated, the final valid sample may exceed 3,500.
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3,500 individual adult respondents is the target completed and QA-validated, analysed sample. Household-level non-response and unavailability are addressed in real time through the field substitution and callback protocol described under Experimental Design. Rather than working to a fixed pre-calculated number of household approaches per starting point, enumerators continue sampling further along the same systematic walk sequence at a given starting point, as needed, until ten quality-assurance-valid interviews are achieved at that point, across 350 starting points in total. This approach responds to realised non-response and invalidation directly at each point rather than relying on an ex-ante attrition buffer; if invalidation at a given point is unusually high, more households are approached at that specific point rather than the shortfall being distributed across the sample.
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Secondary Outcomes (End Points)
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Before
Injunctive social norms index: mean response across three items measuring what most people believe should happen, or what transgender individuals are believed to deserve, regarding rights and legal protections. Two items use a 0–10 count-based response format (area-level reference group) and one item uses a 5-point Likert scale (national-level reference group).
Pluralistic ignorance measure: within-respondent gap between personal attitude score and perceived descriptive norm score — a positive gap indicates the respondent is more accepting than they believe their community to be.
Labour market perceptions: two items measuring perceived employability of transgender individuals in professional versus informal labour.
Post-treatment institutional trust index: Anderson summary index of five items measuring trust in the Supreme Court and government, repeated post-treatment to enable estimation of whether judicial signals shift institutional legitimacy.
Institutional trust misperception (preference-falsification gap): within-respondent gap between personal trust in the Supreme Court and perceived community trust in the Supreme Court, measured pre- and post-treatment, and benchmarked separately at Union Council, tehsil, and city level — included as a validity check on social desirability bias in institutional trust reporting, given the general political sensitivity in Pakistan around expressing distrust of the judiciary to an unfamiliar interviewer, rather than as a substantive pluralistic ignorance finding.
Religious identity activation: single post-treatment item measuring the extent to which religious beliefs influenced the respondent's views during the survey — mechanism test for religious framing effects.
Leaflet acceptance: binary indicator of whether respondent accepts a leaflet about transgender employment opportunities for sharing with others — measure of willingness to be publicly associated with transgender inclusion.
Response-mode validity check: comparison of attitude and norm-perception index scores between verbal and card-based (non-verbal) response conditions, pooled across treatment arms, to assess whether response format affects reporting on sensitive items.
Service enrolment persistence (exploratory, subject to feasibility): a brief follow-up contact with respondents who enrolled in either the cleaning/household help or tutoring service, conducted several weeks after the baseline survey, to assess whether the initial enrolment decision translated into actual service uptake, and whether this persistence differs across treatment arms. This follow-up is conditional on field operational capacity and is not itself a primary registered outcome; if conducted, results will be reported as exploratory and will not be used to revise conclusions drawn from the primary pre-registered enrolment measures.
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After
Injunctive social norms index: mean response across four items measuring what most people believe should happen, or what transgender individuals are believed to deserve, regarding equal treatment and legal rights. Two items (area-level reference group) use a 0–10 count-based response format; two items (national-level reference group) use a 5-point Likert scale.
Pluralistic ignorance measure: within-respondent gap between personal attitude score and perceived descriptive norm score — a positive gap indicates the respondent is more accepting than they believe their community to be. This measure is purely individual-level and requires no external benchmark.
Pluralistic ignorance perception accuracy (exploratory): a separate check comparing each respondent's perceived descriptive norm score against the actual mean personal attitude score among Control-arm respondents in the same geographic unit, computed independently at Union Council, tehsil, and district level, to assess whether respondents' beliefs about their community's attitudes track the true distribution of attitudes in that community, and whether this accuracy differs across treatment arms.
Labour market perceptions: two items measuring perceived employability of transgender individuals in professional versus informal labour.
Post-treatment institutional trust index: Anderson summary index of five items measuring trust in the Supreme Court and government, repeated post-treatment to enable estimation of whether judicial signals shift institutional legitimacy.
Institutional trust misperception (preference-falsification gap): within-respondent gap between personal trust in the Supreme Court and perceived community trust in the Supreme Court, measured pre- and post-treatment — included as a validity check on social desirability bias in institutional trust reporting, given the general political sensitivity in Pakistan around expressing distrust of the judiciary to an unfamiliar interviewer, rather than as a substantive pluralistic ignorance finding. This measure is purely individual-level and requires no external benchmark.
Institutional trust perception accuracy (exploratory): a separate check comparing each respondent's perceived-community-trust score against the actual mean personal trust score among Control-arm respondents in the same geographic unit, computed independently at Union Council, tehsil, and district level, to assess whether respondents' beliefs about their community's trust track the true distribution of trust in that community, and whether this accuracy differs across treatment arms.
Religious identity activation: single post-treatment item measuring the extent to which religious beliefs influenced the respondent's views during the survey — mechanism test for religious framing effects.
Leaflet acceptance: binary indicator of whether respondent accepts a leaflet about transgender employment opportunities for sharing with others — measure of willingness to be publicly associated with transgender inclusion.
Response-mode validity check: comparison of attitude and norm-perception index scores between verbal and card-based (non-verbal) response conditions, pooled across treatment arms, to assess whether response format affects reporting on sensitive items.
Service enrolment persistence (exploratory, subject to feasibility): a brief follow-up contact with respondents who enrolled in either the cleaning/household help or tutoring service, conducted several weeks after the baseline survey, to assess whether the initial enrolment decision translated into actual service uptake, and whether this persistence differs across treatment arms. This follow-up is conditional on field operational capacity and is not itself a primary registered outcome; if conducted, results will be reported as exploratory and will not be used to revise conclusions drawn from the primary pre-registered enrolment measures.
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Secondary Outcomes (Explanation)
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Before
Pluralistic ignorance will be computed as the individual-level difference between the respondent's personal attitudes index score and their perceived descriptive norms index score. A positive value indicates the respondent is more accepting than they perceive their community to be, consistent with pluralistic ignorance in the inclusion direction. Treatment effects on pluralistic ignorance will be estimated both directly (as a constructed outcome) and by comparing treatment effects on the two underlying indices separately, allowing identification of whether signals primarily shift perceived norms, personal attitudes, or both.
The institutional trust misperception gap is constructed identically to the pluralistic ignorance measure above (personal score minus perceived-community score, both standardised before differencing) but is interpreted in the opposite direction: a positive gap here is expected given the general sensitivity around openly expressing distrust of state institutions in the current political climate, and serves as a check on desirability bias in institutional trust reporting rather than as evidence about genuine community norms.
Perceived-community trust and perceptions ("میرا علاقہ" / "my area" in the Urdu instrument) are benchmarked against the average personal trust score among Control-arm respondents at three levels of geographic aggregation — Union Council, tehsil, and city — to assess whether the misperception gap is sensitive to the scale at which "community" is defined, given known limits on statistical precision at the Union Council level with the achieved per-arm sample size.
The post-treatment institutional trust index will be analysed using both a difference-in-differences specification and an ANCOVA specification (post-treatment score regressed on treatment arm indicators, controlling for the pre-treatment score as a covariate). Because treatment is individually randomised, both approaches yield unbiased estimates of the treatment effect; however, ANCOVA is expected to provide a more statistically powerful and more precise test of whether judicial signals shift institutional legitimacy, consistent with established methodological findings that ANCOVA dominates change-score analysis in randomised designs (Van Breukelen, 2006). The ANCOVA specification will serve as the primary specification for this outcome, with the DiD estimate reported as a robustness check.
Independently of treatment arm, 10% of respondents complete the survey using standard verbal response elicitation while 90% use a non-verbal, card-based method in which the respondent points to a response rather than stating it aloud. This assignment is orthogonal to treatment and is not crossed with treatment arm in any planned analysis of primary outcomes; the comparison is included solely to assess measurement validity.
The service enrolment persistence check, if conducted, addresses the distinction between an immediate enrolment decision — a "flow" outcome potentially sensitive to short-term emotional or social-desirability responses to the vignette — and durable behavioural follow-through, better evidence of a genuine change in willingness to engage with transgender-provided services. Because this follow-up depends on field team capacity and resources beyond the primary data collection window, it is registered here as a conditional, exploratory extension rather than a primary outcome.
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After
Pluralistic ignorance will be computed as the individual-level difference between the respondent's personal attitudes index score and their perceived descriptive norms index score. A positive value indicates the respondent is more accepting than they perceive their community to be, consistent with pluralistic ignorance in the inclusion direction. Treatment effects on pluralistic ignorance will be estimated both directly (as a constructed outcome) and by comparing treatment effects on the two underlying indices separately, allowing identification of whether signals primarily shift perceived norms, personal attitudes, or both. This measure is computed entirely at the individual level and does not depend on any geographic benchmark.
Separately, the pluralistic ignorance perception accuracy check benchmarks perceived descriptive norms ("میرا علاقہ" / "my area" in the Urdu instrument) against the average personal attitudes index score among Control-arm respondents at three levels of geographic aggregation — Union Council, tehsil, and district — to assess whether this accuracy is sensitive to the scale at which "community" is defined, given known limits on statistical precision at the Union Council level with the achieved per-arm sample size. Given this precision limitation, the tehsil-level version is treated as primary for this specific check, with Union Council and district-level versions reported as robustness variants.
The institutional trust misperception gap is constructed identically to the pluralistic ignorance measure above (personal score minus perceived-community score, both standardised before differencing) but is interpreted in the opposite direction: a positive gap here is expected given the general sensitivity around openly expressing distrust of state institutions in the current political climate, and serves as a check on desirability bias in institutional trust reporting rather than as evidence about genuine community norms. This measure is computed entirely at the individual level and does not depend on any geographic benchmark.
Separately, the institutional trust perception accuracy check benchmarks perceived-community trust against the average personal trust score among Control-arm respondents at the same three levels of geographic aggregation — Union Council, tehsil, and district — for the same reason and with the same tehsil-level-as-primary approach as the pluralistic ignorance accuracy check above.
The post-treatment institutional trust index will be analysed using both a difference-in-differences specification and an ANCOVA specification (post-treatment score regressed on treatment arm indicators, controlling for the pre-treatment score as a covariate). Because treatment is individually randomised, both approaches yield unbiased estimates of the treatment effect; however, ANCOVA is expected to provide a more statistically powerful and more precise test of whether judicial signals shift institutional legitimacy, consistent with established methodological findings that ANCOVA dominates change-score analysis in randomised designs (Van Breukelen, 2006). The ANCOVA specification will serve as the primary specification for this outcome, with the DiD estimate reported as a robustness check.
Independently of treatment arm, 10% of respondents complete the survey using standard verbal response elicitation while 90% use a non-verbal, card-based method in which the respondent points to a response rather than stating it aloud. This assignment is orthogonal to treatment and is not crossed with treatment arm in any planned analysis of primary outcomes; the comparison is included solely to assess measurement validity.
The service enrolment persistence check, if conducted, addresses the distinction between an immediate enrolment decision — a "flow" outcome potentially sensitive to short-term emotional or social-desirability responses to the vignette — and durable behavioural follow-through, better evidence of a genuine change in willingness to engage with transgender-provided services. Because this follow-up depends on field team capacity and resources beyond the primary data collection window, it is registered here as a conditional, exploratory extension rather than a primary outcome.
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