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Trial Title
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Before
Marks saliency and student performance
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After
Marks saliency and student performance in a low and high stake exam
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Abstract
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Before
A student’s performance on a test is highly correlated with the time and effort exerted in preparation prior to the test. But even with similar preparation levels, some outperform others. Among other factors, this may be attributed to students’ differential intrinsic motivation affecting their effort exerted during the test per se. Gneezy et. al (2019) showed that the low intrinsic motivation during a test could be mitigated by offering pecuniary incentives tied to student’s performance on the test. Our paper extends this literature and studies the effectiveness of a subtler zero-cost behavioral nudge in increasing students’ effort during a test. More specifically, we study how varying the saliency of maximum points allotted to a test, while keeping their percentage weight in the end-semester score fixed, affects students’ exerted effort and performance during the test. We differ from Gneezy et. al (2019) in that we study the effect of our intervention on a high-stakes quiz while their intervention was conducted in a low-stake exam setting.
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After
A student’s performance on a test is highly correlated with the time and effort exerted in preparation prior to the test. But even with similar preparation levels, some outperform others. Among other factors, this may be attributed to students’ differential intrinsic motivation affecting their effort exerted during the test per se. Gneezy et. al (2019) showed that the low intrinsic motivation during a test could be mitigated by offering pecuniary incentives tied to student’s performance on the test. Our paper extends this literature and studies the effectiveness of a subtler zero-cost behavioral nudge in increasing students’ effort during a test. More specifically, we study how varying the saliency of maximum points affects students’ exerted effort and performance during the test. We study this question in two contexts: (a) High stake quiz for microeconomics course, and (b) Zero-stake aptitude test conducted for students persuing communication course at the university.
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Last Published
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Before
January 19, 2022 12:24 PM
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After
February 04, 2022 12:30 PM
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Intervention (Public)
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Before
The experiment is conducted in principles of microeconomics course offered at a large private university in India. The course is part of a general education curriculum. It is the first course in economics offered to new students across the university, with most students having a limited choice over enrollment in the course. Students in one of the assessments are divided into control and treatment where they take the same quiz with different scale of marks assigned to it.
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After
The first leg of the experiment is conducted in principles of microeconomics course offered at a large private university in India. The course is part of a general education curriculum. It is the first course in economics offered to new students across the university, with most students having a limited choice over enrollment in the course. Students in one of the high-stake assessments are divided into control and treatment where they take the same quiz with different scale of marks assigned to it.
The second leg of the experiment is conducted in communications course offered at the same university. Experimental details stay same as in the first leg of the experiment, except that the quiz here is of zero-stake for them, and is a multiple choice aptitude test comprising of some math, some logical reasoning and some english comprehension questions. The only incentive for students to attempt this quiz is one additional attendance that they will receive in their communication class on attempting this quiz. Thus, this is a low stake and low intrinsic motivation context as against the first leg of the experiment which was a high stake and high intrinsic motivation context.
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Intervention Start Date
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Before
January 27, 2022
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After
February 12, 2022
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Intervention End Date
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Before
January 28, 2022
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After
February 28, 2022
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Experimental Design (Public)
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Before
The experiment is conducted in principles of microeconomics course offered at a large private university in India. The course is part of a general education curriculum. It is the first course in economics offered to new students across the university, with most students having a limited choice over enrollment in the course. The course is offered through 7 sections (5 instructors; 3 females and 2 males) in a bi-semester period that started in October 2021 and ended in February 2022. Students' assessment in the course occurrs using 3 quizzes, 1 group project, and 1 final exam which are all identical across the 7 sections. The teaching and assessments are all conducted in English language, which is the official language of instruction at the university. Students in one of the assessments are divided into control and treatment where they take the same quiz with different scale of marks assigned to it.
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After
The first leg of the experiment is conducted in principles of microeconomics course offered at a large private university in India. The course is part of a general education curriculum. It is the first course in economics offered to new students across the university, with most students having a limited choice over enrollment in the course. The course is offered through 7 sections (5 instructors; 3 females and 2 males) in a bi-semester period that started in October 2021 and ended in February 2022. Students' assessment in the course occurrs using 3 quizzes, 1 group project, and 1 final exam which are all identical across the 7 sections. The teaching and assessments are all conducted in English language, which is the official language of instruction at the university. Students in one of the high-stake assessments are divided into control and treatment where they take the same quiz with different scale of marks assigned to it.
The same experiment will also be conducted in a low-stake setting with students pursuing communications course. There are 18 sections of this course offered by multiple instructors. They will write a zero-stake quiz for which the only incentive they have to attempt is an additional attendance that they will receive to attempt the quiz.
We must note that students who are pursuing both the courses simultaneously will be a part of both the experiments. We will control for that in our statistical analysis by adding a dummy for students who became part of both experiments to see if they behaved any differently from others. After the second leg of the experiment, students in both legs of the experiment will be briefed about the nature of the study to request their consent.
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Randomization Method
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Before
Randomization done on computer before the experiment (randtreat command used in stata to randomize, stratified by section and gender)
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After
Randomization in both legs of the experiment done on computer before the experiment (randtreat command used in stata to randomize, stratified by section and gender)
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Randomization Unit
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Before
Randomization at individual level - stratified by section and gender
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After
Randomization in both legs of the experiment is conducted at individual level - stratified by section and gender
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Planned Number of Clusters
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Before
609 students (in 7 sections)
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After
Leg 1 (High-stake quiz): 609 students (in 7 microeconomics sections)
Leg 2 (Zero-stake quiz): 915 students (in 18 communication course sections)
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Planned Number of Observations
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609
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After
609 + 915 = 1524
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Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
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Before
304 students control and 305 students treatment
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After
304 students control and 305 students treatment in leg 1 (high-stake)
457 students control and 458 students treatment in leg 2 (zero-stake)
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