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Field
Trial Status
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Before
in_development
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After
on_going
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Trial End Date
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Before
December 31, 2020
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After
June 30, 2021
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Last Published
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Before
February 18, 2020 02:16 PM
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After
July 04, 2020 02:06 PM
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Field
Intervention (Public)
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Before
In our intervention, students will go through an “interest exploration tool” on a tablet. This tool is designed to help students discover their personality, and to help them understand which jobs their interests could match with. After the students completed the tool, they participate in an information session about educational paths, which provides detailed information on high schools and vocational training options as well as scholarship possibilities. This information session will be conducted in small groups.
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After
In our intervention, students will go through an “interest exploration tool” on a tablet. This tool is designed to help students discover their personality, and to help them understand which jobs their interests could match with. After the students completed the tool, they participate in an information session about educational paths, which provides detailed information on high schools and vocational training options as well as scholarship possibilities. This information session will be conducted in small groups.
IMPORTANT NOTICE: Our intervention had to be interrupted on March 16, 2020, because schools were closed until further notice in Cambodia due to the COVID-19 crisis. The details below reflect the changes we made to the project since then. The original research plan is outlined in the pre-analysis plan from February 5, 2020.
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Field
Primary Outcomes (End Points)
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Before
Primary outcomes will be (i) attendance, (ii) drop-out, (iii) grades, (iv) exam scores, and (v) transition to high school.
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After
Primary outcomes will be (i) partcipation in the final exam, (ii) final-exam scores, and (iii) transition to high school.
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Field
Primary Outcomes (Explanation)
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Before
Individual-level information on attendance, drop-out, grades and test scores will be collected by the project team from each school three times: before the intervention (baseline), roughly three months after intervention (midline), and roughly six months after intervention (endline). Attendance is tracked in the class book and is defined as the number of days student i appeared for class. Students will be classified as having dropped out if marked as such in the student class book. Grades are given by the teacher on a monthly basis and reflect test performance. We will use grades from the main subjects. Grades are standardized (by subject) across all schools to have mean zero and a standard deviation of one. Exam scores are the scores obtained in the end-of-term exam, which is a standardized exam across all schools in Cambodia. The records of each student’s performance in this exams are kept by the teacher. Again, exam scores will be standardized. Finally, roughly 6 to 9 months after the intervention, the project team will collect information regarding high school transition from the high schools in the area (i.e. did student i enroll in that particular institution).
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After
The school closure due to the COVID-19 crisis forced us to modify our research plan. Because schools are to remain closed for the rest of the school year, we can only collect individual-level administrative information on participation in the final exam, final exam scores and high school transition.
The final exam is a standardized exam across all schools in Cambodia. The records of each student’s performance in this exams are kept by the teacher. These scores will be standardized for the purspose of our analysis. Students will be classified as drop-outs if they do not participate in the final exam. Finally, as soon as the new school year starts, the project team will collect information regarding high school transition from the high schools in the area (i.e. did student i enroll in that particular institution).
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Field
Experimental Design (Public)
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Before
We target students from grade 9 in Northeast Cambodia. We construct a sample of lower secondary schools from which we randomly select 50% for our intervention. We then randomly select one class of grade 9 to participate in the intervention (treatment schools), or to have only their students' data collected (control schools). Within these ‘treatment’ schools, we then invite all students of the selected class to participate in a workshop carried out at their school. All students that are willing to participate are randomly allocated into one of three arms: a) full-treatment group (40%), b) placebo-treatment group (40%), c) information-only group (20%). Students in the control schools serve as controls.
The expected sample size is a) 540 students in treatment group, b) 540 students in placebo group, c) 270 students in information-only group, d) 1350 students in pure control.
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After
We target students from grade 9 in Northwest Cambodia. We construct a sample of 60 lower secondary schools from which we randomly select 50% for our intervention. We then randomly select one class of grade 9 to participate in the intervention (treatment schools), or to have only their students' data collected (control schools). Within these ‘treatment’ schools, we then invite all students of the selected class to participate in a workshop carried out at their school. All students that are willing to participate are randomly allocated into one of three arms: a) full-treatment group (40%), b) placebo-treatment group (40%), c) information-only group (20%). Students in the control schools serve as controls.
By March 16, 2020, the day of school closure until further notice in Cambodia, we had visited (and conducted our intervention in) 18 of the 30 treatment schools. This leaves us with a sample of 785 treated students, and roughly 1,800 control students. The experimental control group comprises 19 control schools that are located in the same district as the 18 intervention schools (our original randomization was stratified at the district level). The non-experimental control group comprises all original treatment schools that were not visited (12), and the control schools from those districts (11).
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Field
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
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Before
The expected sample size is a) 540 students in treatment group, b) 540 students in placebo group, c) 270 students in information-only group, d) 1350 students in pure control.
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After
The sample size consists of a) 785 students in treatment schools (all three arms) visited by March 6, 2020, b) 820 students in the experimental control group, c) 990 students in the non-experimental control group.
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Field
Power calculation: Minimum Detectable Effect Size for Main Outcomes
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Before
We calculate the smallest real effect sizes that we can detect at a 5% significance level with 80% power. We perform the calculation based on 30 treatment and 30 control schools with approximately 18 students per cluster (who participate in the full intervention: IET + Information session). When calculating the minimum detectable effect size (MDE), we take into account that we have baseline information on student age, gender, test scores, attendance and class size. We expect that these baseline characteristics can explain between 20% and 50% of the variation in the outcome variable. We further assume that the intra-cluster correlation coefficient (ICC) ranges between 0.1 and 0.3 depending on the variable considered.
Depending on the ICC and explained variance, the MDEs range between 0.20 of a SD and 0.38 of a SD. These are the detectable effect sizes for outcomes with mean zero and a standard deviation of one (such as standardized grades).
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After
We calculate the smallest real effect sizes that we can detect at a 5% significance level with 80% power. We perform the calculation based on 18 treatment and 19 control schools with approximately 43 students per cluster. When calculating the minimum detectable effect size (MDE), we take into account that we have baseline information on student age, gender, grades, attendance and class size. We expect that these baseline characteristics can explain between 20% and 50% of the variation in the outcome variable. We further assume that the intra-cluster correlation coefficient (ICC) ranges between 0.1 and 0.3 depending on the variable considered.
Depending on the ICC and explained variance, the MDEs range between 0.23 of a SD and 0.46 of a SD. These are the detectable effect sizes for outcomes with mean zero and a standard deviation of one (such as standardized grades).
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Field
Secondary Outcomes (End Points)
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Before
Secondary outcomes are stated educational aspirations and career goals.
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After
Secondary outcomes are, (i) participation in learning activities during July - August, (ii) stated educational aspirations, and (iii) stated career goals.
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Field
Secondary Outcomes (Explanation)
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Before
These outcomes will be collected on the day of the intervention (endline), and from treatment schools only. Since we do not conduct surveys in control schools (due to limited budget), we can only estimate if the IET has an effect on educational aspirations and career goals over and above the effect of the information session. In other words, we can only test if these variables are different across treatment arms within treated schools.
Educational aspirations are measured as (i) the highest degree the student wishes to attain (categorical answer), and (ii) how confident the student is that she will achieve this level of education. Career goals are measured (i) by open ended questions about up to three preferred jobs the student wishes to do at age 25, and (ii) how confident the student is that she will be able to get her most preferred job.
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After
These outcomes will be collected via phone surveys (starting on July 6, 2020) with students from treatment and control schools. Educational aspirations are measured as the highest degree the student wishes to attain (categorical answer). Career goals are measured by open ended questions about the most preferred jobs the student wishes to do at age 25 (open ended). We will categorize a career goal as ambitious if it goes beyond the typical reference window of students of the same age-group and area.
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