Gathering Information about careers: the role of gender

Last registered on February 18, 2020

View Trial History

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title

Gathering Information about careers: the role of gender

RCT ID

AEARCTR-0005464

Initial registration date

February 16, 2020

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 18, 2020, 2:15 PM EST

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

Locations

Country

United States of America

Region

Chicago

Primary Investigator

Name

Yana Gallen

Affiliation

University of Chicago

Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name

Melanie Wasserman

PI Affiliation

UCLA

Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status

In development

Start date

2020-02-18

End date

2020-09-22

Keywords

Gender, Labor

Additional Keywords

JEL code(s)

Secondary IDs

Abstract

Recent evidence suggests that occupations and firms are key determinants of earnings differentials among men and women (Blau and Kahn, 2017; Card, Cardoso, and Kline, 2016). Research is scant, however, on what drives gender differences in these labor market outcomes. In this project, we investigate why men and women sort into different occupations, firms, and jobs, by studying whether the access to and provision of information regarding career paths differs systematically by gender.

How and from whom do new labor market entrants seek advice regarding their career path decisions? Do the mentor-mentee relationships formed exacerbate or attenuate gender differences in information and expectations about potential jobs? We seek to study the supply of and demand for advice regarding career choices among college students. Specifically, we will explore whether advice seekers’ demographic characteristics alter their access to and the informational content of advice received.

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation

Gallen, Yana and Melanie Wasserman. 2020. "Gathering Information about careers: the role of gender." AEA RCT Registry. February 18. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.5464-1.0

Sponsors & Partners

Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

Intervention Start Date

2020-02-18

Intervention End Date

2020-05-31

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

We will analyze gender differences in rates of response, length of response, content of response, offers of help, and whether the professional validates or mitigates concerns. To construct these outcomes, we will ask the students their perceptions, use third-party evaluators, and use natural language processing tools such as sentiment analysis.

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Professionals will be randomly assigned to receive a message from a male or a female student. Each professional-student communication will use one of four message templates. Each professional will receive at most one message. Each student participant will be invited to an in-person session during which they will be instructed on how to set-up a profile on the professional platform, asked to rank professionals, and asked to send pre-formulated messages to their list of 100 professionals. Students will also be instructed on how to submit information concerning professional replies to the research team. One month after students have attended the in-person session, they will fill out an endline survey in which they detail their subsequent interactions with professionals and describe their attitudes concerning various career path choices.

Experimental Design Details

Randomization Method

The randomization of students to professionals is done using STATA's random number generator.

Randomization Unit

The level of randomization is the professional

Was the treatment clustered?

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters

10,000 professionals

Sample size: planned number of observations

10,000 professionals

Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms

5,000 professionals per student gender.

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

We expect to send 10,000 messages, half from female and half from male students. Our main outcomes of interest are (1) response rates and (2) the quality and content of responses. We expect response rates of 0.15, which is in between response rates in studies of cold emails to politicians (Kalla et al. (2018)) and cold emails to venture capitalists (Gornall and Strebulaev (2018)). Based on informal testing of the first message to 96 graduate students with industry experience, we observe the mean/sd number of words per message of 93/71 and the rate of discussing work/life concerns of 0.13. With 80 percent power and 5 percent statistical significance, the minimum detectable gender differences are 2 percentage points in response rates, 10.28 words per message, and .048 in the rate of discussing work/life concerns.

Supporting Documents and Materials

IRB