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Evaluating the Efficacy of Financial Education Programs in school: Case of Armenia

Last registered on August 23, 2019

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Evaluating the Efficacy of Financial Education Programs in school: Case of Armenia
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0004436
Initial registration date
July 18, 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
July 19, 2019, 12:02 PM EDT

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

Last updated
August 23, 2019, 1:05 AM EDT

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

Locations

Region

Primary Investigator

Affiliation
Central Bank of Armenia

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Affiliation
American University of Armenia

Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2019-09-01
End date
2022-09-30
Secondary IDs
Abstract
From September 2018, financial education was integrated into 4 subjects Mathematics, Me and the World, Algebra and Social Science in 350 schools of Armenia. For the next 3 consecutive years this program will be implemented in the rest of 1050 schools in tranches. Little is known about the effectiveness of financial education in schools, and to fill this gap we ran a randomized control trial to assess the effectiveness of integration of financial education in school curriculum. Specifically our research analyses the impact of this program on financial knowledge, skills and attitude.

The evaluation was conducted over the course of four school year, from September 2019 to September 2022, by Central Bank of Armenia. Our experimental sample consists of the students from 2nd grade to 11th grade in 100 schools. In our analysis we used a phase-in design and randomly assigned the time which the schools are going to get the treatment.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Hovanessian, Naneh and Vahe Movsisyan. 2019. "Evaluating the Efficacy of Financial Education Programs in school: Case of Armenia." AEA RCT Registry. August 23. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.4436-3.0
Former Citation
Hovanessian, Naneh and Vahe Movsisyan. 2019. "Evaluating the Efficacy of Financial Education Programs in school: Case of Armenia." AEA RCT Registry. August 23. https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/4436/history/52200
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
In the new curriculum financial education topics were integrated into 4 subjects for all primary, secondary and
high schools: Mathematics, Me and the World, Algebra and Social Science. The topics included consists of
Intervention Start Date
2019-09-01
Intervention End Date
2022-06-30

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Financial knowledge, financial skills and financial attitude, trust
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
Financial knowledge: Index based on questions about their financial knowledge on inflation, interest rates, money, value of the money and etc.
financial skill: Index based on questions about their skills on calculating the interest rates, inflation etc.
financial attitude: Index based on questions about their attitude on savings, loans value of money and etc.
trust: The level of trust of financial system (1-5)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
There are 1421 schools in Armenia. From which, in 2018, 349 schools from 10 regions and Yerevan were selected to be a part of the program. In the following 3 years the rest of the schools will also implement the program in 3 tranches (For 3 consecutive years, each year approximately 350 schools will join the programs so at the end of 2021, all 1421 schools will have financial education topics incorporated in their subjects). We assign the cities and villages to be treated in the 3 following years (2019, 2020, and 2021), (the cities and villages that were treated on 2018 were also selected randomly). After having the year that every school will be treated, we decide the samples that we are going to survey for our evaluation. From September 2019, each year (every September) we will have a survey from 100 schools (same schools each year) that are randomly chosen from 4 treatment groups (2018-2021). So from each year’s treatment we will have 25 schools. The list of the schools are also randomly chosen.
The survey should be repeated each year until 2022 when all schools were trained to have a final evaluation. In our evaluation method we will compare these four treatment groups and will see how the students differ on their financial knowledge, skills and attitudes in the groups that had the training for only one year, two years, three years, and four years..
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
In office by a computer.
Randomization Unit
Cities and villages at first to see in which year they are getting the treatment, and then randomly choose 25 schools from each group (each phase-in year)
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
100 Schools
Sample size: planned number of observations
40,000 pupils
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
25 schools treatment year 2018
25 schools treatment year 2019
25 schools treatment year 2020
25 schools treatment year 2021
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Institutional Review Board of the American University of Armenia
IRB Approval Date
2019-08-22
IRB Approval Number
AUA-2019-015

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

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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