A Day in the Future: the impact of role models on children’s aspirations.

Last registered on December 19, 2021
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
A Day in the Future: the impact of role models on children’s aspirations.
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0008698
Initial registration date
December 19, 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
December 19, 2021, 1:52 PM EST

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

Locations

Country
Italy
Region
Campania (Napoli)

Primary Investigator

Name
Selene Ghisolfi
Affiliation
LEAP, Bocconi University
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Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Federica Lupi
PI Affiliation
Bocconi University
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PI Name
Giovanna Marcolongo
PI Affiliation
CLEAN - Bocconi
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PI Name
Raffaella Dimastrochicco
PI Affiliation
Bocconi
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PI Name
Marco Lemoglie
PI Affiliation
Università Cattolica Milano
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Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2021-12-16
End date
2022-12-30
Keywords
Crime, Violence, & Conflict, Education
Additional Keywords
Role models, Aspirations
JEL code(s)
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
Kids from poor neighborhoods have typically lower career aspirations than kids from well-off neighborhoods. The gap in aspirations translates into a discrepancy in human capital investment, which causes poverty traps. The aim of this research project is to test whether showing young students the successful careers of professionals who come from the same high-poverty, high-crime neighborhood affects the children’s aspirations and school choices.
Our intervention will target an elementary and middle school in Naples, in a neighborhood with high levels of both poverty and crime. We target students from grades three to eight. Hence, we target students who have not chosen their academic path yet, but who are approaching (some more than others) the choice of high school.
We are organizing a Career Day during the Fall term of the school year. During the Career Day, professionals who come from that neighborhood will share their stories, each of them during a 20-minute presentation. The professionals are people who earned a college degree and are currently employed in a variety of jobs (e.g., as an accountant or psychologist). In his or her speech, each professional will detail his or her current job, the academic path that led to it, his or her motivation and the challenges he or she had to overcome. After the presentations, there will be a Q&A session.
The intervention will be randomized at the class level, with half class being treated and the other half being in the control group. During the intervention, the students in the control group will follow a class on environmental education. We assess the impact of the intervention on academic achievement, high school choice of the students who are now in grade eight, and self-reported aspirations. If proved to be successful, the project represents a cost-effective tool to promote students’ aspirations while potentially reducing crime rate among teenagers.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Dimastrochicco, Raffaella et al. 2021. "A Day in the Future: the impact of role models on children’s aspirations.." AEA RCT Registry. December 19. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.8698-1.0
Sponsors & Partners
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
We are organizing a Career Day during the Fall term of the school year. During the Career Day, professionals who come from that neighborhood will share their stories, each of them during a 20-minute presentation. The professionals are people who earned a college degree and are currently employed in a variety of jobs (e.g., as an accountant or psychologist). In his or her speech, each professional will detail his or her current job, the academic path that led to it, his or her motivation and the challenges he or she had to overcome. After the presentations, there will be a Q&A session.
Children in the control group will watch and discuss a video on the green revolution and the future of the planet.
Both groups will have access to a website describing the event each child has participated in and will have the opportunity to re-access information they might have missed.
Intervention Start Date
2021-12-16
Intervention End Date
2022-05-30

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Academic achievement and standardized test scores
Self reported aspirations
School choice
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
Academic achievement and standardized test scores - asked from the school (grade reports) and the Italian ministry of education (INVALSI standardized tests, comparable to the whole country)
Self reported aspirations - answer to the question: What school would you want to go to when you grow up? What do you want to become when you grow up? Name a person you would like to be like when you grow up.
School choice - reported by official data.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
We study whether meeting and interacting with young professionals from a similar socio-economic background affects the aspirations of children in grades three to eight.
We run an RCT. We perform a within class randomization, and divide each class in two groups. The treatment group attends a “Career Day”, while the control group participates to a discussion on the environment, “Earth Day”.
During the Career Day (treatment), students will listen to the presentations of four different role models. The role models are young professionals who come from the same neighborhood as the students, earned a college degree and are currently employed. Each role model will talk about his or her job, the academic path that led to it, his or her motivation and the challenges he or she had to overcome. The presentations will take place in person and will be followed by a Q&A session during which students will have the opportunity to interact with the presenters.
During the Earth Day, students will watch two videos. In each of them, a young adult talks about the challenge raised by global warming. Then, a college student will moderate a debate to discuss conscious environmental practices.
In both activities, students will have the chance to meet people who can inspire them – although only the treatment group will focus on potential career paths. Both groups will have the chance to interact either with the speaker or with each other so to avoid to capture a mere “interaction” effect.
We plan to study the effect of the career day on:
1. Effort - administrative data on academic achievement and standardized test scores;
2. Aspirations - self-reported via survey
3. School choice - administrative data.
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
Stratified by class, gender and immigration status, done in office by computer program (stata)
Randomization Unit
individual
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
360 children approx
Sample size: planned number of observations
360 (max.)
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
180 treated, 180 control children
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Preliminary power calculations put the minimum detectable effect size at 30%of a standard deviation for major outcomes. The program is a pilot.
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Bocconi Ethics Committee
IRB Approval Date
2021-12-15
IRB Approval Number
FA000212.01.02.02
Analysis Plan

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