Beyond the Paycheck: Motivational Tools for Public School Teachers in Punjab Pakistan

Last registered on July 24, 2019

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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title

Beyond the Paycheck: Motivational Tools for Public School Teachers in Punjab Pakistan

RCT ID

AEARCTR-0004482

Initial registration date

July 24, 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 24, 2019, 4:48 PM EDT

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

Locations

Country

Pakistan

Region

Punjab

Primary Investigator

Name

Zahra Mansoor

Affiliation

Oxford University

Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

Additional Trial Information

Status

On going

Start date

2019-06-01

End date

2019-10-31

Keywords

Education, Governance

Additional Keywords

JEL code(s)

JI21

Secondary IDs

Abstract

In a citizen-facing and pro-social department like education, we argue that non-monetary motives such as the desire for recognition, in-tangible career incentives, and/or intrinsic motives such as the desire to serve the community may also be important determinants in the primary school teacher’s decision to exert effort. If such tools are effective, they may also be more feasible than financial incentives in a developing world setting where limited public sector budgets have many competing priorities. Motivated by this, our study implements a randomized field experiment with the Punjab Training Academy in which public school teachers receive various types of non-monetary incentives across four districts of Punjab in a teacher training setting. The study aims to explore the effectiveness of the designed interventions, channels through which they operate, whether extrinsic incentives crowd out intrinsic motivation, and how treatment effects may be heterogeneous by individual teacher characteristics.

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation

Mansoor, Zahra. 2019. "Beyond the Paycheck: Motivational Tools for Public School Teachers in Punjab Pakistan." AEA RCT Registry. July 24. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.4482-1.0

Former Citation

Mansoor, Zahra. 2019. "Beyond the Paycheck: Motivational Tools for Public School Teachers in Punjab Pakistan." AEA RCT Registry. July 24. https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/4482/history/50593

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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

The treatments in the experimental design are different variants of departmental recognition.

The departmental recognition (non-monetary) incentive is a typical tournament-based incentive. Within a classroom, the teacher who scores the highest in the training post-test score and the teacher who shows the maximum improvement over the pre-test (highest value-added) can qualify for a prestigious departmental certificate. To explore causal channels of mechanisms, we also develop an intervention which includes a bundle of departmental recognition along with a self-efficacy enhancing intervention. This allows us to collect causal evidence on whether such incentives work through a self-efficacy channel.

Intervention Start Date

2019-07-10

Intervention End Date

2019-10-01

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

Teacher training test scores

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

The test scores are captured through a test at the conclusion of the training.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

teacher perceptions on departmental support, trust in the department, job satisfaction, job commitment, teacher self-efficacy, and locus of control

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Each secondary outcomes is constructed through pre-tested scales of these measures.

Experimental Design

We use a randomised field experiment to assign teacher training classes to the different treatment groups.

Experimental Design Details

We randomize 168 teacher classes into either a public recognition, career plus, public plus, career plus , or a control arm.

Randomization Method

Randomization was done in an office on a computer through a STATA code

Randomization Unit

We conduct our randomization at the teacher training classroom level.

Was the treatment clustered?

Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters

168 classes

Sample size: planned number of observations

4,500 teachers

Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms

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

Given the assumptions of correlation with baseline measure of 0.27 and intra cluster correlation of 0.12 which is based on the training test scores of teachers from the previous trainings, we will be able to detect an effect size of 0.25 and above.

Supporting Documents and Materials

IRB