Experimental Design
We will randomly assign students into two groups - treatment and control.
Control group will fill the same set of incentivized baseline and endline surveys as the treatment group. The only difference will be that the treatment group will be revealed the information about past grade distribution.
The assignment of students to the two groups will happen randomly and individually. They'll be assigned to their respective groups in the early days of the course using a random device,. The assignment, however, will not be conducted before the drop-out date has passed. This will prevent any spill-overs by students switching between classes as a result of our intervention.
We plan to collect past assessment scores and other relevant student related demographic information. A risk-aversion question to elicit a measure of their risk-attitudes is also included in the baseline survey.
The incentive used to make students participate in the experiment is an extra credit (or a part of an extra credit ) in the course. That extra credit will be uniform for the entire class and will be directly proportional to the percent of students from the class participating in the experiment. However, the extra credit awarded will be given to all students, regardless of their participation status.
The pilot started in the Fall semester 2020 (3 classrooms, 133 students) and the project continues in Spring 2021 (7 classrooms, 261 students).