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Field
Abstract
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Before
In contexts with rigid gender norms and low female labor force participation, young women tend to lack professional role models, have limited awareness of their strengths and interests, and lack exposure to a variety of career options. While students in expensive schools or from affluent families can easily access career counseling, students from socio-economically weaker groups lack this type of guidance. We examine whether and to what extent a career guidance program that advises disadvantaged young women in groups can influence their career plans, selection of professional objectives, and choices after finishing school (primary), as well as their locus of control and confidence (secondary). Working with 12th graders from 100 classrooms in 22 Delhi girls’ government schools, we will use a clustered randomized controlled trial with treatment assignment at the classroom level to assess the short- and medium-term impact.
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After
In contexts with rigid gender norms and low female labor force participation, young women tend to lack professional role models, have limited awareness of their strengths and interests, and lack exposure to a variety of career options. While students in expensive schools or from affluent families can easily access career counseling, students from socio-economically weaker groups lack this type of guidance. We examine whether and to what extent a career guidance program that advises disadvantaged young women in groups can influence their career plans, selection of professional objectives, and choices after finishing school (primary), as well as their locus of control and confidence (secondary). Working with 12th graders from senior secondary schools in a large city in India, we will use a clustered randomized controlled trial with treatment assignment at the school level to assess the short- and medium-term impact.
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Trial Start Date
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Before
April 01, 2023
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After
April 25, 2023
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Trial End Date
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Before
December 31, 2023
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After
December 31, 2024
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Last Published
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February 06, 2023 11:41 AM
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After
April 21, 2023 07:01 AM
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Intervention (Public)
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Before
The career exploration program will take place in randomly selected classrooms of 12th graders in 22 girls' government schools in Delhi. The program guides and encourages students to identify their strengths, interests and talents; to consider their barriers and constraints; to identify people who can support them; to identify suitable and interesting careers; and to make plans to pursue a career path aligned with their strengths and interests. Facilitators are a few years older than the participating students, typically enrolled in tertiary education, but from a similar community as the participating students. This helps the students to relate with the facilitators. In addition to the in-person meetings, facilitators will also use WhatsApp groups to interact with the students and for the students interact with each other. Further, facilitators will have bilateral conversations with the students. The partner organization conducting the career exploration program provides materials on a wide range of career paths for all participating students.
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After
The career exploration program will take place in classrooms of 12th graders in 22 randomly selected schools. The program guides and encourages students to identify their strengths, interests and talents; to consider their barriers and constraints; to identify people who can support them; to identify suitable and interesting careers; and to make plans to pursue a career path aligned with their strengths and interests. Facilitators are a few years older than the participating students, typically enrolled in tertiary education, but from a similar community as the participating students. This helps the students to relate with the facilitators. In addition to the in-person meetings, facilitators will also use WhatsApp groups to interact with the students and for the students interact with each other. Further, facilitators will have bilateral conversations with the students. The partner organization conducting the career exploration program provides materials on a wide range of career paths for all participating students.
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Intervention End Date
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Before
August 31, 2023
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After
October 31, 2023
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Experimental Design (Public)
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Before
Methodologically, we will conduct a randomized controlled trial with an oversubscription design. That is, we first elicit who is interested in participating in the program using a short information session in combination with a short screening questionnaire. We will list all students who want to participate in the program until we reach our intended total sample size. In the next step, we will invite randomly selected 65% of the students to participate in the program.
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After
Methodologically, we will conduct a clustered randomized controlled trial with randomization at the school level.
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Randomization Unit
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Classroom
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School
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Planned Number of Clusters
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100 classrooms in 22 schools
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45 schools
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Planned Number of Observations
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2800-3200 students
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7500-8500 students
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Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
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157 in treatment and 84 in control
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22 schools with program, 23 schools in control group
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Power calculation: Minimum Detectable Effect Size for Main Outcomes
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0.16 standard deviations
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After
0.20 standard deviation, 80% power
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