Higher Order Risk Preferences and Field Behavior in Rural Bangladesh: An Intervention

The intervention consists of conveying the content of the 'Lions Quest Skills for Growing Program' during school hours in participating schools. The material of interest here aims at helping children and adolescents making good judgments, especially when it comes to health and prevention. Please see https://www.lions-quest.org/explore-our-sel-curriculum/elementary-school-social-and-emotional-learning/ for more information.

The following description of the program has been copied from Lions Quest Materials; the parts of the program that are of particular interest to us in the context of the research project outlined here are the acquisition of skills with respect to good judgmement, and the material in unit 4: 'Health and Prevention'. We implemented the 'Lions Quest Skills for Growing' program, which is targeted at younger learners, in grades 2 to 5.

Lions Quest Skills for Growing (Early Learners–Grade 5) and Skills for Adolescence (Grades 6–8) are comprehensive positive youth development and prevention programs for early learners through grade 8. Both programs bring together families, educators, and community members to help students develop life and citizenship skills within a safe, caring, and consistent environment. The program teaches skills in the following four main areas:
• Self-discipline
• Responsibility
• Good judgment
• Respect for others

Classroom Curriculum
The classroom curriculum consists of six core thematic units that are consistent across the grades from early learners through grade 8. These units support skill building in each of the five social and emotional learning core competencies: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision making. Lessons on service-learning and drug, alcohol, tobacco, and violence prevention are also integrated into these core thematic units. Units 1 and 6 help create a safe, caring, and consistent classroom and encourage reflection on the concepts and skills developed in each grade level. The six units in each grade level are titled as follows:
Unit 1: A Positive Learning Community
Unit 2: Personal Development
Unit 3: Social Development
Unit 4: Health and Prevention
Unit 5: Leadership and Service (this unit was not implemented, as Lions Club recommends for a shorter, 28-week schedule)
Unit 6: Reflection and Closure
The lessons in each of these six units include grade-appropriate content that develops sequentially by topic. The Lions Quest classroom curriculum complements standard elementary and middle school curricula and provides ways to teach, integrate, and reinforce program concepts and skills in the areas of language arts, social studies, science, health, and guidance.

2019-02-01

2019-10-31

Higher-Order Risk Preferences, in particular prudence, will be investigated for a moderating role between the intervention and the outcomes 1-3 below
1) Health-Related Behavior
* General Health
* Addictive Behavior (asked to children from age 12 onwards)
* Excessive Phone Usage
2) Preventative Behavior (with a focus on, but not limited to, health-related behavior)
* Short-Term Prevention
* Long-Term Prevention
3) Eco-Friendly Behavior

0) Higher Order Risk Preferences will be measured experimentally using a short three point certainty equivalence version (9 survey items) of the method introduced in Schneider, Ibanez and Riener (2021).

1) Health Behavior will be measured using survey instruments.
* General: consists of two survey items (regularity of sport/exercising - a 7 point scale ranging from never to daily; reduction/avoidance of exposure to indoor pollution - a 5 point scale ranging from completely disagree to completely agree)

* Addictive Behavior: consists of six survey items asked to children from age 12 onwards (usage of paan or tobacco - 7 point scale ranging from 'never tried' to 'more than 5 times per day'; ganja consumption - a 4 point scale ranging from 'never tried' to 'regular consumption'; regularity of tobacco smoking - a 4 point scale ranging from 'never tried to regular consumption', alcohol consumption - a 4 point scale ranging from 'never tried' to 'regular consumption'; experimentation with other substances - a binary question; regularity of consumption of other substances - a continuous integer outcome.)

* Excessive Phone Usage: consists of ten survey items (all items are 5 point scales, except the first item on ownership of or access to a mobile phone (filter question) and the last item on activities performed on the phone (7 options); the remaining items are: feeling of missing interaction with the phone - scale ranging from 'completely disagree' to 'completely agree'; problems in personal relations due to excessive phone usage - scale ranging from 'never' to 'daily'; uncomfortable feeling when unable to interact with phone - scale ranging from completely disagree to completely agree; distracting with phone - scale ranging from 'never' to 'always'; disturbed by mobile phone - scale from 'never' to 'always'; lack of self-control with respect to usage time - scale from 'completely disagree' to 'completely agree'; phone interaction interferes personal life - scale from 'completely disagree' to 'completely agree'; sleep deprivation due to phone usage - scale from 'completely disagree' to 'completely agree'.)

2) Preventative Behavior will be measured using survey instruments.
* Short-Term Prevention: consists of seven survey items (all of them are 5 point scales with n/a option as indicated below; the items are: washing hands with soap - scale ranging from 'completely disagree' to 'completely agree'; wearing helmet when biking/motorcycling - scale ranging from 'never' to 'always' with the option to indicate that participants never ride a bike or motorcycle; not jumping in unsafe waters - scale ranging from 'never' to 'always' with the option to indicate that participants generally do not jump into water or that there is just no water nearby; interchanging secrets with friends - scale ranging from 'never' to 'always'; "hedging" in group work at school - scale ranging from 'never' to 'always' with the option to indicate that participants do not attend school; making homework to avoid being called out without homework in front of the class - scale ranging from 'completely disagree' to 'completely agree' with the option to indicate that participants do not attend school; avoiding to walk alone - scale ranging from 'never' to 'always'.)

* Long-Term Prevention: consists of seven survey items (all of them are 5 point scales with n/a option as indicated below; the items are: brushing teeth - scale ranging from 'never' to 'always; eating sweets - scale ranging from 'never' to 'every day'; eating fruits - scale ranging from 'never' to 'every day, when seasonally available'; fetching water from arsenic-free sources - scale ranging from 'never' to 'always' with the option to indicate that participants never fetch water or that they are not aware of the problem; drinking only water that can be assumed to be free of arsenic - scale ranging from 'never' to 'always' with the option to indicate that participants are not aware of the problem; getting good grades at school as a precautionary measure - scale ranging from 'completely disagree' to 'completely agree' with the option to indicate that participants do not attend school; staying in school as long as possible as a precautionary measure - scale ranging from 'completely disagree' to 'completely agree' with the option to indicate that participants do not attend school.)

3) Eco-Friendly Behavior will be measured using survey instruments, and it consists of 3 items (all of them are 5 point scales with n/a option as indicated below; the items are: non-disposal of waste in nature - scale ranging from 'never' to 'always'; avoidance of plastic bags - scale ranging from 'never' to 'always'; planting trees to help the environment - scale ranging from 'completely disagree' to 'completely agree' with the option to state that the question does not apply, because no trees are planted with the goal mentioned.)

Aggregation of the survey masures 1) to 3) from individual items will be performed by a) unweighted mean b) weighted mean, using weights e.g. from a PCA on the whole sample or the village where we always will be accounting for reversed items. This will result in continuous measures/indices, where higher outcomes indicate more favourable outcomes. We might also apply data-driven approaches to identify particularly relevant single items that might be analyzed in isolation.

We have a single treatment and a single control group. The 135 primary schools in our sample are divided into 69 treatment and 66 control group schools by stratified randomization. In cooperation with Lions Clubs International, we implemented the social and emotional learning (SEL) program Lions Quest Skills for Growing (PreK-5) in grades 2 to 5 of the 69 treatment schools. The remaining 66 schools in the control group did not receive any treatment.

Randomization was done in an office by a computer, more specifically using STATA. In order to gain a balanced treatment-control group setting, we stratified by subdistrict (our schools are located in 11 subdistricts differing in their schooling authorities and hence their educational environment), by distance of the school to its respective subdistrict capital (as a proxy for schooling quality) and village literacy rate. No re-randomization was done but the first draw taken.

The treatment was randomized on school level.

Yes

Treatment was assigned to 69 out of a total of 135 schools (hence, 66 schools in control group). These schools are serving 150 villages that we randomly selected from 11 subdistricts (chosen based on the availability of NGOs willing to collaborate) belonging to four main districts of Bangladesh.

3,000 households from the 150 villages that are served by the 135 primary schools in our sample; sampled by selecting at least 20 children from grades 2 to 5 of each school in 2019 – larger samples from schools serving multiple sample villages, e.g. 40 children per school if the school serves two villages. We have a sample that covers about 3,000 pupils attending grades 2 to 5 in 2019 plus information on at least one of their siblings (if they have siblings, the additionally sampled sibling is chosen randomly).

69 schools in treatment group, 66 schools in control group.