Panel:
Randomized Field Trials Testing the Power of Information to Improve Educational Outcomes
(Education)
*Names in bold indicate Presenter
The application of field experiments in research has helped to dramatically advance our understanding of how policy interventions work on the ground. In this panel, we bring together four innovative field experiments in education that focus on the provision of information to students and parents. Each experiment seeks to identify the effect of providing individuals with new or personalized information to support their academic success.
The studies illustrate how information frictions and our own psychological biases lead to suboptimal investments in education. The interventions draw heavily on behavioral science insights to address these frictions and biases. They advance our understanding of not only the power of information, but also the importance of how that information is delivered and framed. They also provide an overview of some of the cutting-edge practices in conducting randomized field trials.
The first paper attempts to increase parent engagement among families with preschool-age children by providing information and materials related to math activities. A treatment arm where parents were randomized to receive both the math materials and regular text-message reminders to engage in educational activities with their children led to an improved math environment in the home. The intervention was particularly successful at increasing time spent on educationally enriching activities in Spanish speaking households.
A second study analyzes how a new communication technology might improve the quality and flow of information between schools and families. When provided access to a facebook-like mobile communication app, K-12 school teachers and parents rarely used the technology. However, in schools randomized to receive both access to the app and intensive supports for setting up and using the app, communication increased significantly. These increases resulted in improved teacher-parent communication as perceived by teachers, but did not translate into improved student outcomes.
The third field experiment aims to improve support for college students by providing administrative information and making it easily accessible. The authors find that a mobile-phone based intervention was successful at keeping undergraduate students informed of administrative processes, academic supports, and on-campus activities. Automated, informational text messages succeeded in lowering the share of students withdrawing from school and increased the probability that time-sensitive issues, such as holds on students’ registration, were resolved.
Finally, the forth randomized field trial tests whether active choice framing affects veterans’ decision making about whether to take-up GI Bill benefits. Simply phrasing information about an available education benefit in a way that prompted active choice – compared to a response framed as a deviation from status-quo – caused individuals to seek out more information. However, differences in message framing do not appear to lead to measurable differences in the take-up or transfer of GI benefits in the short-run, except among higher SES groups.
Together, this closely aligned panel of field experiments provides new insights into the potential and limitations of improving educational outcomes through informational interventions.
