The Effect of Monitoring on Ethnic Discrimination

Last registered on March 26, 2020

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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title

The Effect of Monitoring on Ethnic Discrimination

RCT ID

AEARCTR-0005602

Initial registration date

March 26, 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

March 26, 2020, 1:24 PM EDT

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

Locations

Country

United States of America

Region

online

Primary Investigator

Name

Edmund Baker

Affiliation

FAU-Erlangen-Nürnberg

Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name

Veronika Grimm

PI Affiliation

FAU-Erlangen-Nürnberg

Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status

In development

Start date

2020-03-30

End date

2020-07-31

Keywords

Labor

Additional Keywords

Discrimination, Monitoring, Experimental Demand Effect, Social Desireability Effect

JEL code(s)

Secondary IDs

Abstract

Studies show that CVs with typically black names receive fewer callbacks than otherwise identical CVs with typically white names (Zschirnt and Ruedin, 2016). However, studies in a more experimental setting have failed to replicate a penalty for black CVs (Kessler et al., 2019). One hypothesis for this discrepancy is that subjects hide their prejudice when they are being monitored. We test this hypothesis by measuring discrimination towards black CVs in the United States under conditions in which the subjects are either aware or unaware that they are being monitored.

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation

Baker, Edmund and Veronika Grimm. 2020. "The Effect of Monitoring on Ethnic Discrimination." AEA RCT Registry. March 26. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.5602-1.0

Sponsors & Partners

Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

See experimental design.

Intervention Start Date

2020-03-30

Intervention End Date

2020-07-31

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

CV Score

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

Experience Score, Teamwork Score, Customer Service Score, Time Spent, Subject Changed their Mind

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Subjects are asked to read a job description for an office manager and then to assess a number of randomly generated CVs that vary according to work experience, education, interests, gender and ethnicity. Subjects are asked to give each CV a score from one to ten. The control group will only be informed of the task at hand. One treatment is informed of the task and asked to confirm that their input data will be scrutinised by our team. A second treatment is informed of the task and told that they are participating in an online experiment. Subjects are asked to give a general score out of ten for each CV and then three specific scores for experience, teamwork, and customer service respectively. This allows us to further detect the mechanism by which any ethnic discrimination takes place.

Experimental Design Details

Randomization Method

Randomisation by computer program.

Randomization Unit

Individuals are randomly allocated to treatment. CVs are randomly generated.

Was the treatment clustered?

Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters

1440 Individuals/Subjects

Sample size: planned number of observations

8640 CVs

Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms

480 Individuals Control
480 Individuals Monitoring Treatment
480 Individuals Experiment Treatment

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

90% power to detect a 0.2 standard deviation effect size in CV_score out of ten for critical value of 0.05. 50% power to detect a 0.1 standard deviation.

Supporting Documents and Materials

IRB