The impact of mentoring and life skills on secondary school progression and child labor among girls: A randomized controlled trial in Rajasthan, India

Last registered on August 06, 2018

Pre-Trial

General Information

Title

RCT ID

AEARCTR-0001046

Initial registration date

February 08, 2016

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

February 08, 2016, 3:49 PM EST

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

Last updated

August 06, 2018, 1:39 PM EDT

Last updated is the most recent time when changes to the trial's registration were published.

Locations

Country

India

Region

Asia

Primary Investigator

Name

Benjamin Feigenberg

Affiliation

University of Illinois at Chicago

Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name

Eric Edmonds

PI Affiliation

Dartmouth College

Contact Investigator

PI Name

Jessica Leight

PI Affiliation

Williams College

Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status

In development

Start date

2016-02-12

End date

2019-05-30

Keywords

Education, Labor

Additional Keywords

JEL code(s)

Secondary IDs

Abstract

Throughout the developing world, there are substantial gender differences in school attendance and the economic lives of children. Moreover, these differences generally widen as cohorts age as the gap between male and female enrollment increases. Female students are accordingly less likely than their male peers both to enter and to graduate from secondary school. This dropout risk is associated with vulnerability to child labor, forced labor, and human trafficking.

This evaluation seeks to answer the question of whether life skills training and mentoring by older female role models, denoted “social mobilizers”, can improve school progression and non-cognitive skills for girls while reducing their engagement in child labor. The project is being implemented by Williams College in partnership with the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab and the non-governmental organization Room to Read. The objective is to evaluate Room to Read’s Girls’ Education Program, and the sample includes 2,551 girls in 119 schools that are located in the Ajmer District of Rajasthan, India. To evaluate program impacts, girls in 60 of the 119 schools were randomly assigned to receive Room to Read’s Girls’ Education Program, while girls attending the remaining 59 schools were assigned to the control group.

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation

Edmonds, Eric, Benjamin Feigenberg and Jessica Leight. 2018. "The impact of mentoring and life skills on secondary school progression and child labor among girls: A randomized controlled trial in Rajasthan, India." AEA RCT Registry. August 06. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.1046-3.0

Former Citation

Sponsors & Partners

There is information in this trial unavailable to the public. Use the button below to request access.

Request Information

Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

This evaluation seeks to answer the question of whether life skills training and mentoring by older female role models, denoted “social mobilizers”, can improve school progression and non-cognitive skills for girls while reducing their engagement in child labor. The project is being implemented by Williams College in partnership with the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab and the non-governmental organization Room to Read. The objective is to evaluate Room to Read’s Girls’ Education Program, and the sample includes 2,551 girls in 119 schools that are located in the Ajmer District of Rajasthan, India. To evaluate program impacts, girls in 60 of the 119 schools were randomly assigned to receive Room to Read’s Girls’ Education Program, while girls attending the remaining 59 schools were assigned to the control group.

Intervention Start Date

2016-06-15

Intervention End Date

2018-06-15

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

We will examine the impact of Room to Read’s Girls’ Education Program on four primary sets of outcomes: (1) School progression and completion, (2) Life skills, (3) Child labor, and (4) Cognitive skills and academic achievement. Please see the included analysis plan for construction of specific outcome measures and relevant indices.

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

For all constructed indices, we will first take the difference between each component survey response value and the mean within the control group and then divide by the control group standard deviation. We will then average over all index components, ensuring that values for each component are constructed so that the index interpretation is consistent (i.e. higher values of empowerment index components all correspond to higher levels of empowerment). Note that at each analysis phase, the control group mean and standard deviation will be calculated from the concurrent data (i.e. control group mean and standard deviation will be calculated in the follow-up data when outcomes from the follow-up data are being analyzed).

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

The sample includes 119 schools that are located in the Ajmer District of Rajasthan, India. The sample consists of those schools in Ajmer that had between 16 and 32 girls enrolled in class five as of Fall 2015, did not have any other NGOs providing life skills curricula to students, and had a classroom in acceptable condition in which a life skills class could take place. The full analysis sample will include all female students who were currently enrolled in class five in these schools as of January 2016 (2,551 female students in total). We conducted a stratified randomization that assigned 60 of the 119 sample schools to the Treatment group. Randomization was stratified based on whether schools were above or below median quality, where quality was defined based on a normalized index that included measures of teacher experience, teachers’ educational attainment, and classroom and school infrastructure quality. All girls in Treatment schools will receive the Room to Read intervention during the school year beginning in June, 2016. Girls enrolled in the remaining 59 schools are assigned to the Control group.

Experimental Design Details

Randomization Method

Randomization done in office by a computer.

Randomization Unit

School-level randomization

Was the treatment clustered?

Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters

119 schools

Sample size: planned number of observations

2,551 female students

Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms

60 schools assigned to treatment and 59 schools assigned to control.

Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)

Given the available sample, power calculations suggest that we will be able to detect increases of 4 percentage points in child enrollment and decreases of 3 and 8 percentage points for child marriage and wage work, respectively. These minimum detectable effects sizes are calculated based on 0.90 power, a one-sided hypothesis test conducted with a p-value of .05, and assumed intraclass correlations of 0.06, 0.00, and 0.10 for child enrollment, child marriage and wage work, respectively. We note that intraclass correlation values are calculated based on existing pilot data to the extent possible. Based on pilot data, we estimate that 92% of girls will progress to secondary school in the control group, 11% of girls will be married before age 14 in the control group, and 32% of girls in the control group will report wage-earning activities in the past 7 days.

Supporting Documents and Materials

IRB