Street Violence and Media Empowerment: Evidence from Guatemala

Last registered on February 20, 2024

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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title

Street Violence and Media Empowerment: Evidence from Guatemala

RCT ID

AEARCTR-0004298

Initial registration date

June 10, 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

June 10, 2019, 10:38 PM EDT

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

Last updated

February 20, 2024, 12:59 PM EST

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

Locations

Country

Guatemala

Region

Primary Investigator

Name

Alex Armand

Affiliation

Nova School of Business and Economics

Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name

Ivan Kim Taveras

PI Affiliation

Navarra Center for International Development, University of Navarra

Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status

Completed

Start date

2019-10-01

End date

2022-12-31

Keywords

Crime, Violence, & Conflict

Additional Keywords

youth, empowerment

JEL code(s)

Secondary IDs

Prior work

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

Abstract

Homicide is rampant in Latin America and the Caribbean. This project has a two-fold objective. First, it will provide evidence on the impact of an effort to protect at-risk youth in Guatemala through empowerment. This is implemented through a randomized individual-level intervention on the role of self-expression in shaping behavior among the youth living in areas festered with violence and lack of access to opportunities. For this purpose, the participation in a mass-media campaign will serve as main source of variation. Second, it aims to understand the role of media in the fight against gangs, by varying throughout the country the exposure to the mass-media among youth. To capture this, this project will exploit semi-random variation in the reception of radio and tv signals through topography, and random variation through social media.

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation

Armand, Alex and Ivan Kim Taveras. 2024. "Street Violence and Media Empowerment: Evidence from Guatemala." AEA RCT Registry. February 20. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.4298-2.0

Former Citation

Armand, Alex and Ivan Kim Taveras. 2024. "Street Violence and Media Empowerment: Evidence from Guatemala." AEA RCT Registry. February 20. https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/4298/history/212415

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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

Intervention Start Date

2020-04-01

Intervention End Date

2021-04-01

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

Violent behavior, sense of belonging, aspirations, homicide rates

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

The evaluation design of the first component is a standard individual-level randomized controlled trial.

Experimental Design Details

The evaluation design of the first component is a standard individual-level randomised controlled trial. The component aims to estimate the impact of empowering at-risk youth the impact of media in changing violent attitudes and sense of belonging. The first component of the project aims to estimate the impact of empowering at-risk youth the impact of media in changing violent attitudes and sense of belonging. It will focus on the following outcomes:
1. A survey of participants including thorough questions on their sense of belonging in their community, and verbal and physical altercations during the past two weeks, and aspirations. Demographic and socioeconomic data will also be collected allowing for a full description of the main characteristics of these individuals, their households, their network and their perceptions. Researchers will create indices of participants’ sense of belonging and propensity to engage in violent behavior from self-reported data. Information will be collected at three points in times: at the time of the registration as participant, 2 months following the intervention and 1 year following the intervention.
2. Behavioral measurements with at-risk youth measuring violent attitudes which will be piloted at first to test their informational value.
The second component of the project will estimate the impact of a national media campaign on administrative data about violence. Administrative data on homicides occurring across Guatemala which is to be provided by the Guatemalan Statistical Office, INE. See attached letter of support.
Target population: For the first component, the unit of analysis for individual experiments are 1200 at-risk youths between 16 and 21 years old from three municipalities: Guatemala, Mixco and Villa Nueva. These are the three municipalities in Guatemala with the highest murder rate. Researchers choose Mixco and Villa Nueva as they have seen recent growth in numbers of mareros due to its lack of basic social services and low-income background of several households (Clavel, 2019). The presence of mareros in Guatemala City is well documented and a driving force of the largest homicide rate in the country (Dudley, 2016; Muggah & Aguirre Tobón, 2018). For the second component, the unit of analysis is the administrative unit. Depending on the degree of granularity provided the INE, we will perform analysis at the level of the municipality (340 in total) or below this level (e.g. zonas).

Randomization Method

Stata code

Randomization Unit

Individual

Was the treatment clustered?

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters

N/A

Sample size: planned number of observations

1200 at-risk youths between 16 and 21 year

Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms

400 individuals per treatment arm

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

This study proposes to have 1200 at-risk youth between the ages of 16 and 21 to be randomly allocated into one of three groups (T0, T1, T2). With 80 percent of statistical power and an alpha of 0.05, we could capture a minimum detectable effect of 0.2 of a standard deviation (as standard in randomized experiments) with 394 individuals per group. We therefore decide to have 400 individuals in each comparison group, which provides a power of 81 percent (alpha = 0.05). With cross-randomization, statistical testing could extend to 5 groups (T0, T1, T2 and cross-randomization within T1 and T2). This is in addition to test cross-randomized groups, for which previous calculations also apply. In this case, we would have 240 individuals in each comparison group. With 80 percent of statistical power and an alpha of 0.05, this allows capturing a minimum detectable effect of 0.26 of a standard deviation.

Supporting Documents and Materials

IRB