What do you want to become? Career Aspiration and School Performance. Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment

2022-02-01

2022-06-18

1. Future plans and goals
2. Self-reported grades
3. Student motivation
4. Locus of control
5. Ambition/aspirations
6. Grit
7. Expert prediction of the effect of the intervention on the students

1. Future plans and goals: whether the student has an idea what he or she would like to do after school. Students will be asked if they know what they would like to do after school. To this question, they will have the opportunity to answer that they have no idea yet or would like to continue with a course of study, an internship, or looking for a job.
They will also be asked what job they would like to do; they can answer with a specific job or their field of interest or no idea yet.
2. Self-reported grades in German, Math, Italian, and English.
3. Student motivation: to measure students' motivation in pursuing their interests, we ask them to quantify their effort at school, their interest in their school situation, and whether they have taken steps to find information regarding their future work.
4. Locus of Control: Students are asked several questions about their locus of control; we measure whether the intervention increased their internal locus of control
5. Ambition/ aspirations: we will measure students' ambitions by asking how likely they are to achieve their goals and reach certain educational and professional levels. They will also be asked how much their parents' or friends' choices weigh on their future employment.
6. Grit: The students are asked several questions about their grit and persistence. We will measure if we see any changes in their level of grit through the intervention.
7. Expert prediction: Parallel, experts (teachers, educators, education economists) will anonymously be asked about their expected effect of the intervention on the students to see if expert predictions of the intervention align with final outcomes.

1. Intention to change school
2. Satisfaction going to school
3. Positively of future success
4. Heterogeneity based on student characteristics

Our RCT has two stages. First, a random sample of high school classes will be selected to participate in a workshop run by a local Organization designed to help them better visualize their future careers. Next, students in the first intervention will be asked if they want to participate in a weekend retreat run by the Organization where they will learn more about different careers. Half of the interested students will be randomly selected to participate in this retreat.

The intervention will be run in six non-vocational high schools in several towns in a northern region of Italy. All first, second and third classes (equivalent to 9th – 11th grade) have agreed to participate, leading to 123 classes and around 2300 students in our full sample.

First, 60 out of 123 high school classes will be randomly selected to participate in a workshop run by a local organization. The treated classes will receive a 2-hour workshop during school hours. The workshop is held by professional educators from a local Organization and will involve taking a preference test that suggests different professions and job fields. Additionally, the students will do a self-affirmation exercise where they are supposed to externalize their values and future plans.

Next, students in the treated classes will be asked if they would like to participate in a more in-depth event which will be held for a full weekend. Half of the students who signed up (up to a maximum of 150) will be randomly selected to participate in the weekend. At this second intervention, the students can gather information about professions, talk to mentors, consultants, and educators about their possible path and see presentations about different professions.

Both interventions are provided at no cost.

We will evaluate the impact of the intervention by comparing the change in knowledge about the future, motivation, and educational performance in the treated groups to that in the control group, before and after the intervention through surveys conducted on students’ mobile phones during school hours in schools. The baseline survey will be conducted in December 2021 and January 2022. The follow-up survey will be collected around four months after the first intervention and one month after the second intervention.

Finally, results from the intervention will be compared to predictions from experts about the effectiveness of the program.

Randomization performed in an office by a computer, using STATA software.

Randomized at the class level for the first treatment. Randomization on the individual level for the second treatment.

Yes

123 classes for the first treatment.

around 2400 pupils for the first treatment Up to 300 for the second treatment

60 classes in the treatment group and 63 classes in the control group for first treatment

Depending on sign up rate 150 students in treatment group and 150 students in control group for second treatment.