The role of monitoring and motivation in policy adoption

Last registered on April 21, 2021

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
The role of monitoring and motivation in policy adoption
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0007586
Initial registration date
April 20, 2021

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
April 21, 2021, 10:43 AM EDT

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

Locations

Region

Primary Investigator

Affiliation
IDEICE & PUCMM

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Affiliation
Universidad de los Andes

Additional Trial Information

Status
On going
Start date
2021-04-16
End date
2021-12-31
Secondary IDs
Abstract
We study whether to motivate and instruct on the use of a task execution monitoring and tracking application could increase compliance levels and policy adoption. The application has two types of users. The first with a supervisory role at the educational district level. The second type of user are school principals. The district user, after receiving training on the strategy and use of the platform, invites school principals through the application to organize a workshop on the results of the diagnostic evaluations carried out by the Ministry of Education on a census basis in all high school centers. The application provides to the district level user at-the moment progress of the activities school principals have carried out. Both users are provided with an instructive schedule with deadlines and tutorials on YouTube channels that can be accessed from the platform and from the entire communications suite. All district officials receive training and coaching in addition to the mandate of the Ministry. For the first treatment group, we motivate every week district officials to review the app. For the second treatment group, we send them weekly messages with step-by-step instructions on how to monitor their principals using the app.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Morales, Daniel and Catherine Rodriguez Orgales. 2021. "The role of monitoring and motivation in policy adoption." AEA RCT Registry. April 21. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.7586-1.0
Sponsors & Partners

Sponsors

Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
This project coincides with efforts by the Dominican Ministry of Education to increase compliance and policy adoption. Since 2017, the Ministry of Education implements a national standardized test to gauge educational attainment. The Ministry sends a report card to all school principals on their students’ performance and directs them to coordinate with the leadership team, the teachers, and parent organizations specific workshops where results should be shared, and improvement plans are to be designed. There is currently no official mechanism that generates evidence on the fulfillment of this mandate.

In AEARCTR-0004954, Morales et al (2019), used a sample of primary schools where they reached school principals directly and communicate them the policy mandates. In this new setting, we develop an application to reach school principals through their natural supervisors: school district.

Prior studies (e.g., Agte et al. 2020) suggest completion of similar tasks is low in the Dominican Republic (roughly 30%). We hope this technology helps increase compliance levels.



Intervention Start Date
2021-04-22
Intervention End Date
2021-06-30

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Our main results are whether the district user invite the school principals into the app, whether principals activate themselves as users in the app, carry out the workshop to disseminate the results of the diagnostic evaluation in their school and whether they send a form with questions about the workshop and the list of attendees.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary outcomes in our study include: (i) whether district officials open the emails related to the campaign, including the number of times they interact with different aspects of the messages and the app, (ii) whether principals interact with the app, (iii) post-campaign survey responses, among others.

Most of our secondary outcomes aim to measure possible mechanisms to explain the primary outcome results.
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
Each school district has a director and a set of accredited user-technicians for the app. There are 122 school districs, and the total number of high schools is 2370 within all districts (an average of 19.42 schools per district). We randomize the 122 school districts into three groups. All districts receive training and coaching in addition to the mandate of the Ministry. For the first treatment group, we motivate every week to review the application. For the second treatment group, every week we send them step-by-step instructions on how to monitor using the app.
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
Computer-based randomization
Randomization Unit
School districts
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
2370 schools located in 122 school districts
Sample size: planned number of observations
2370 schools
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
Control group: 752 schools in 42 school districts: app training

Treatment group 1: 899 schools in 40 school districts: app training + weekly motivation message to review the app.

Treatment group 2: 719 schools in 40 school districts: app training + weekly messages with step-by-step instructions on how to monitor using the app.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Instituto Dominicano de Evaluación e Investigación de la Calidad Educativa
IRB Approval Date
2021-04-19
IRB Approval Number
N/A

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
No
Data Collection Complete
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials