Back to History Current Version

Supporting the school participation of displaced children

Last registered on March 29, 2019

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Supporting the school participation of displaced children
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0003834
Initial registration date
February 09, 2019

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
February 10, 2019, 7:50 PM EST

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

Last updated
March 29, 2019, 1:26 PM EDT

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

Locations

Region

Primary Investigator

Affiliation
UNICEF

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Affiliation
UNICEF
PI Affiliation
Tufts University

Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2018-09-03
End date
2020-01-28
Secondary IDs
Abstract
As described in a recent report commissioned by the Inter-Agency Standing Committee - Humanitarian Financing Task Team (2016), funding for humanitarian interventions is volatile. This volatility leads to “a short-term programming focus” and “start-stop operations with sub-optimal execution”. As a result, humanitarian interventions may not be optimally aligned with the crisis they are designed to address. Humanitarian programmes may, for instance, have to be scaled down drastically while a crisis is still at its peak. We know little about the implications of such volatility for beneficiaries.

This study focuses on the scale down of a humanitarian intervention. The program, known as Hajati, was initiated by UNICEF Jordan at the height of the Syrian displacement crisis. Hajati provides monthly cash transfers to vulnerable households with at least one child in a subset of public Jordanian primary schools. Most of these were displaced Syrian households. The cash transfers are unconditional but labelled as an education intervention. The program started operating in the 2017/18 schoolyear and was originally conceived as a program that would provide sustained support. However, it had to be scaled down in the 2018/19 schoolyear due to funding shortages, when program coverage was reduced from about 56,000 to roughly 7,000 children. During the 2018/19 schoolyear, the Hajati team started experimenting with an additional intervention layered on to the cash transfers. The intervention consisted of SMS text messages encouraging beneficiary households to send their children back to school after the winter break, a precarious time of the schoolyear with particularly high dropout rates.

Relying on a cluster-randomized trial, this study compares children who receive Hajati benefits in the 2018/19 schoolyear to those who do not. The trial consists of four treatment arms: one in which households receive both Hajati cash transfers and the newly introduced encouragement messages, one in which they receive only the encouragement messages, one in which they receive only the cash transfers, and a fourth group that does not receive either intervention. Baseline data consist of administrative targeting data collected at the start of the program just before the 2017/18 schoolyear. Endline data will be collected in February and March of 2019, shortly after the winter break.

The primary aim of the study is to establish the impact of (dis)continuing the cash benefits on three outcome domains: (i) children’s material wellbeing, (ii) children’s school enrolment and participation after the winter break and (iii) children’s psychosocial wellbeing. The study will also establish whether the encouragement messages helped to maintain children’s school participation and whether this effect is stronger among households who received the cash benefits (i.e. whether there is a synergy between the cash transfers and the encouragement messages). The latter is important, because cash transfers are often seen as an entry point for behavioural change interventions.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Aker, Jenny, Jacobus de Hoop and Luisa Natali. 2019. "Supporting the school participation of displaced children." AEA RCT Registry. March 29. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.3834-2.0
Former Citation
Aker, Jenny, Jacobus de Hoop and Luisa Natali. 2019. "Supporting the school participation of displaced children." AEA RCT Registry. March 29. https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/3834/history/44326
Sponsors & Partners

There is information in this trial unavailable to the public. Use the button below to request access.

Request Information
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
* Cash transfers to (primarily displaced Syrian) households with children in public primary schools
* Text messages to encourage households to send their children back to school after the winter break
Intervention Start Date
2018-09-03
Intervention End Date
2019-06-30

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Here we describe our hypotheses for the primary outcome domains and the associated outcome variables. As cash transfer programs may affect many areas of children’s lives, we cover a fairly wide range of outcome variables. A more detailed description of the outcome variables is available in the separate pre-analysis plan.

Domain 1: Children’s material well-being.
Hypothesis 1: Hajati cash transfers are labelled as an education intervention. Hence, we expect these transfers to increase household expenditure on children’s nutrition, material items, and education.

1a. Food security:
• Child reported: ate three meals yesterday, did not skip a meal yesterday, ate breakfast yesterday, did not go to bed hungry yesterday
• Household reported: WFP food consumption scale and score above average

1b. Access to basic items:
• Child reported ownership of: pair of summer shoes, pair of winter shoes, warm clothes for the winter, warm blanket for the winter.

Domain 2: Children’s schooling
Hypothesis 2a: Increased expenditures on children due to Hajati result in positive effects on school participation
Hypothesis 2b: Encouraging households to send their children back to school after the winter break lowers school dropout during the school year
Hypothesis 2c: The effects of encouraging households to send their children back to school after the winter break are stronger in households receiving Hajati cash (i.e. β_1>β_2+β_3, see equation 2 below)

2a. School expenditures and school items:
• For each child in school, household’s will be asked to report expenditures on six categories of school-related expenditures. If households cannot answer by category, they will be asked to estimate total school-related expenditures.
• Child reported (for children in school): receives an allowance to purchase lunch or snacks during schooldays, has a schoolbag, has all the stationery needed for school.

2b&c. School attendance:
• Child reported school participation
• Household reported school participation
• Teacher reported (if feasible) school participation and performance in school
• Enumerator observed (if feasible) school participation

Domain 3: Children’s psychosocial well-being:
Hypothesis 3a: Increased expenditures on children and increased school participation lead to improvements perceived social support. Children in school have more opportunities for socializing with their friends. Moreover, a child-focused program may increase adult household members care for children.
Hypothesis 3b: As a result of increased school participation (and possibly social support), children’s mental wellbeing, self-esteem, aspirations, and outlook on life improve.

3a. Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support
• Including additional questions developed by research team: My family and household members care about (i) my progress in school, (ii) my future, (iii) my health, and (iv) my feelings

3b1. Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale for Children (CES-DC)

3b2. Rosenberg’s Self-esteem scale

3b3. Aspirations based on Middle Years Development Instrument
• Plans to graduate from primary school, secondary school, and college or university

3b4. Outlook on life based on Holistic Student Assessment:
• Optimism
• Trust
• Assertiveness
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
In principle, all outcome variables will be constructed on the full sample of children participating in the child questionnaire. For example, in the construction of the variable “attended school the last day school was in session”, we will assign the value zero both to children who are not in school and to children who are in school but did not attend on the last day.

All variables will be (re-)coded such that higher values mean more positive outcome. Items with limited variation will be excluded from the analysis. As a general rule of thumb, we will exclude variables for which 95% of observations or more have the same value. However, such items will not be excluded from standardized scales, such as the CES-DC.

Given the nature of the outcome variables, corrections for extreme values are not considered necessary. The only exception is school expenditures, and we will check robustness by top-coding at the 95th percentile.

A more detailed description of the outcome variables is available in the separate pre-analysis plan

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Domain 4: Child work
Hypothesis 4: Increased school participation and income related to children reduces child engagement in economic activities and household chores

4. Child work (child reported):
• Economic activities
• Household chores
• Hazardous economic activities
• Excessive hours of economic activities or household chores

Domain 5: Children’s exposure to violence
Hypothesis 5: Changes in children’s daily activities will change their exposure to violence

5. Exposure to non-physical and physical violence
• Any
• In school
• In the workplace
• At home

Domain 6: Migration
Hypothesis 6: Program induced changes in household income and future opportunities for children affect propensity to migrate

6. Household and/or child plan to migrate:
• Child reported
• Household reported

Domain 7: Marriage and fertility
Hypothesis 7: Program induced changes in household income and future opportunities for children affect early marriage and pregnancy

7. Marriage and fertility (child reported):
• Married since the start of the new schoolyear
• Girls only: currently pregnant and got pregnant since start of the new schoolyear

Domain 8: Household ability to pay
Hypothesis 8: Program induced changes in household income increase household ability to pay for essentials and lower household propensity to incur debt

8. Household payment ability (household reported):
• During the past three months, was the household able to pay in full for: drinking water, water other than drinking, electricity, school transportation, other education related expenditures.
• During the past three months, did the household incur new debt?
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
Relying on a cluster-randomized trial with multiple treatment arms, the study explores and decomposes the impacts of (dis)continuing the Hajati cash transfers and the encouragement messages.
Experimental Design Details
Randomization
In the 2017/8 school year, Hajati was operational in 205 schools (DSS). This number was reduced prior to the start of the 2018/9 schoolyear in two steps:
1. Only schools in the four governorates with the largest number of Hajati DSSs were considered: Amman, Irbid, Mafraq, Zarqa (180 DSSs)
2. The three least vulnerable of these DSSs (based on average vulnerability score of children attending the school) were removed (177 DSSs).

Hajati components were randomly allocated to these 177 DSSs. As part of this randomization process, DSSs that are within close geographical proximity were considered as one cluster. This procedure effectively combines the 177 DSSs into 160 DSS clusters. This step was taken to avoid randomizing schools that are close to each other into different treatment arms. Randomization was carried out by the study team by means of a random number generator. Within each of the four governorates, DSS clusters were randomly selected into one of four mutually exclusive groups: a group receiving both cash transfers and the newly introduced encouragement messages (T1), a group receiving only encouragement messages (T2), a group receiving only cash transfers (T3), and a group not receiving either intervention (T4).

The final allocation of schools by treatment arm is: 39 DSS clusters in T1; 41 in T2; 40 in T3; and 40 in T4. The fact that the number of schools is not exactly equal to 40 in T1 and T2 is an artefact of the stratified randomization; the number of clusters per governorate is not always a multiple of four. We relied on (and adapted) McKenzie and Bruhn’s code as provided in their World Bank Impact Evaluation blog.

Sampling Frame
In the 2017/18 schoolyear, Hajati covered 55,922 school-aged children (6-15) living in households that could be classified as: (i) living in non-camp settings, (ii) vulnerable in accordance with the baseline targeting criteria, and (iii) having at least one child aged 6-15 in one of the 205 double shifted schools. Under the planned budget envelope, even in the restricted set of 39 T1 and 40 T3 DSS clusters not all of these households could continue to receive cash benefits. A decision was therefore made to continue to allocate Hajati cash only to the 25 most vulnerable of these households in each of the T1 and T3 DSS clusters. This procedure was expected to result in about 2,000 households receiving cash benefits and, given that households are expected to have a little over 3 eligible children on average, nearly 7,000 beneficiary children.

One issue we have to account for is that children from the same household may attend different schools. This leads to two complications. First, within the same household, one child may be assigned to a school eligible to receive ‘more’ Hajati benefits than the other. To deal with this issue, the following decision was made. If households have at least one child in a T1 DSS cluster (cash and encouragement), all children will be eligible to receive T1 benefits. If households have no child in T1, but have at least one child in T3 (cash only), all children will be eligible to receive T3 benefits. If households have no child in T1 or T3, but have at least one child in T2 (encouragement only), all children will be eligible to receive T2 benefits (regardless of school assignment). Second, if children attend multiple schools, and we count the household for both schools, our sample size drops below 25 per DSS cluster. To deal with this issue, a decision was made to apply a weighting procedure. If the children in the household attend only one DSS, its weight will be equal to one. If the children attend two DSSs, its weight will be equal to 0.5 (1/2) and so forth. The weighted sum of all households in a DSS cluster needs to be at least 25 (and below 26).

Data
Baseline data will consist of the targeting data collected as part of the initiation of the Hajati program. Endline interviews will consist of a household questionnaire and a child-level questionnaire to be administered to one randomly selected child aged 10 to 16 (at endline) per household. At the time of writing, endline data collection was scheduled to start in the second half of February, 2019.

The household questionnaire builds and expands on the baseline/targeting questionnaire administered at the beginning of the schoolyear 2017/8; it includes modules on health, education, children’s experience in school, living conditions, WASH, access to facilities, expenditures, food consumption, assets, aid, payment abilities and operational performance.

The child questionnaire draws heavily on standardized modules that measure children’s mental wellbeing and have been pre-validated in Arabic. It will be administered to children age 10 to 16 years old at endline. Modules include among others: mental health, self-esteem, social support, trust and optimism, aspirations, fertility, education, violence at home, time use, expenditure and food security.

In addition, we are currently exploring the possibility of implementing a short school questionnaire. The school questionnaire would comprise basic questions to teachers on children’s school attendance and performance in school. In addition, enumerators would be asked to carry out a spot-check, to see if enrolled children are in school on the day of their visit.
Randomization Method
Stratification by governate, and conducted by the researchers using a random number generator
Randomization Unit
Clusters of double shifted schools (see also experimental design)
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
160 clusters of double shifted schools
Sample size: planned number of observations
Target: 25 weighted households per cluster, for a total of a little over 4,000 households. See experimental design.
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
39 DSS clusters in T1; 41 in T2; 40 in T3; and 40 in T4. See experimental design.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Power calculations for school enrollment and attendance are available on request.
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Tufts University IRB
IRB Approval Date
2019-02-22
IRB Approval Number
In progress
IRB Name
King Hussein Cancer Center
IRB Approval Date
2019-02-22
IRB Approval Number
In progress
Analysis Plan

There is information in this trial unavailable to the public. Use the button below to request access.

Request Information

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

There is information in this trial unavailable to the public. Use the button below to request access.

Request Information

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