|
Field
Abstract
|
Before
Researchers have documented racial and gender gaps in college enrollment decisions, choice of major, degree attainment, and earnings—despite narrowing gaps in test scores and course-taking in K-12 settings. Implicit racial and gender stereotypes of faculty members may affect their interactions with students and exacerbate these gaps, even without awareness or intent to harm members of underrepresented groups. Yet, there is no causal evidence on the extent to which faculty’s implicit bias contributes to these educational disparities and which types of interventions are cost-effective in mitigating any harmful effects of implicit bias on student achievement gaps.This study aims to address implicit bias of faculty members through the collaboration between psychologists and economists. First, we plan to understand the relationship between faculty’s implicit bias and gaps in student achievement, completion, and economic mobility using a newly constructed dataset with schools’ student-level and faculty-level administrative data, and faculty’s implicit association test (IAT) results. Second, we plan to implement a randomized field experiment to evaluate the effects of faculty implicit bias trainings on students' academic performance. Due to schools’ adjustments to online education in March 2020, we will pilot the study using an online format in Fall 2020 at Reynolds Community College. The pilot will take place between October 7-December 20, 2020.
|
After
Researchers have documented racial and gender gaps in college enrollment decisions, choice of major, degree attainment, and earnings—despite narrowing gaps in test scores and course-taking in K-12 settings. Implicit racial and gender stereotypes of faculty members may affect their interactions with students and exacerbate these gaps, even without awareness or intent to harm members of underrepresented groups. Yet, there is no causal evidence on the extent to which faculty’s implicit bias contributes to these educational disparities and which types of interventions are cost-effective in mitigating any harmful effects of implicit bias on student achievement gaps.This study aims to address implicit bias of faculty members through the collaboration between psychologists and economists. First, we plan to understand the relationship between faculty’s implicit bias and gaps in student achievement, completion, and economic mobility using a newly constructed dataset with schools’ student-level and faculty-level administrative data, and faculty’s implicit association test (IAT) results. Second, we plan to implement a randomized field experiment to evaluate the effects of faculty implicit bias trainings on students' academic performance. Due to schools’ adjustments to online education in March 2020, we will pilot the study using an online format in Fall 2020 at Reynolds Community College and Fall 2021 at other three community colleges. The second pilot will include videos instead of only in-person interaction with psychologists for the implementation of the implicit bias training.
|
|
Field
Trial End Date
|
Before
December 20, 2020
|
After
December 23, 2021
|
|
Field
Last Published
|
Before
October 06, 2020 04:31 PM
|
After
November 27, 2021 09:39 AM
|
|
Field
Intervention Start Date
|
Before
October 07, 2020
|
After
October 23, 2020
|
|
Field
Intervention End Date
|
Before
December 20, 2020
|
After
December 23, 2021
|
|
Field
Experimental Design (Public)
|
Before
The study intends to evaluate how providing implicit bias training to higher education instructors impacts students' outcomes. We will offer---in the fall of 2020---an implicit bias training to a randomly selected sample of instructors teaching courses at the Fall 2020 term in Reynolds Community College. The training is designed to expose faculty members to their own implicit biases and provide them with tools to adjust their automatic pattern of thinking with the ultimate goal of mitigating any biased behavior. This treatment--- implemented by psychologists---will be based on scientific evidence and previous research results and it will adopt a non-judgmental approach that focuses on the recipients’ self-interest and organizational interest. Follow up emails will be sent at most bi-weekly to remind instructors of training content to raise awareness about potentially biased behavior. We will then evaluate the impact of interacting with instructors exposed to training on students' outcomes. Due to schools’ adjustments to online education in March 2020, we will pilot the study using an online format in Fall 2020 at Reynolds Community College, randomizing across instructors from all departments.
|
After
The study intends to evaluate how providing implicit bias training to higher education instructors impacts students' outcomes. We will offer an implicit bias training to a randomly selected sample of instructors teaching courses at the Fall 2020 term in Reynolds Community College and Fall 2021 term at other three community colleges in Virginia. The training is designed to expose faculty members to their own implicit biases and provide them with tools to adjust their automatic pattern of thinking with the ultimate goal of mitigating any biased behavior. This treatment--- implemented by psychologists---will be based on scientific evidence and previous research results and it will adopt a non-judgmental approach that focuses on the recipients’ self-interest and organizational interest. The pilot in the Fall 2020 includes only syncronous interaction between psychologists and faculty members. The pilot in the Fall 2021 will test the implementation of professional videos for the implicit bias training together with group discussion mediated by a psychologist. Follow up emails will be sent at most bi-weekly to remind instructors of training content to raise awareness about potentially biased behavior. We will then evaluate the impact of interacting with instructors exposed to training on students' outcomes. Due to schools’ adjustments to online education in March 2020, we will pilot the study using an online format in Fall 2020 at Reynolds Community College, randomizing across instructors from all departments.
|
|
Field
Planned Number of Clusters
|
Before
For the online pilot at Reynolds community college in Fall 2020, we will stratify based on faculty’s baseline survey completion such that half of the survey completers are assigned to treatment and half are assigned to the control group.
|
After
For the online pilot at Reynolds community college in Fall 2020, we will stratify based on faculty’s baseline survey completion such that half of the survey completers are assigned to treatment and half are assigned to the control group.
For the online pilot at the three community college in Fall 2021, we will stratify based on faculty’s baseline survey completion such that half of the survey completers are assigned to treatment and half are assigned to the control group.
|
|
Field
Planned Number of Observations
|
Before
For the online pilot at Reynolds community college in Fall 2020, we will include 328 instructors across all departments in our randomization. We can observe for these instructors across 1,000 classes and we also have information on over 6,000 students.
|
After
For the online pilot at Reynolds community college in Fall 2020, we will include 328 instructors across all departments in our randomization. We can observe for these instructors across 1,000 classes and we also have information on over 6,000 students.
For the online pilot at the three community college in Fall 2021, we will include 1078 instructors across all departments in our randomization.
|
|
Field
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
|
Before
For the online pilot at Reynolds community college in Fall 2020, we will have 164 instructors assigned to treatment and 164 assigned to the control group.
|
After
For each experiment, we include 50% of faculty members as treated and 50% as control.
|
|
Field
Keyword(s)
|
Before
Education, Labor
|
After
Education, Labor
|
|
Field
Building on Existing Work
|
Before
|
After
No
|