We conducted a baseline survey with 2,499 female final year undergraduate students between October 2018 and February 2019.1 Of them, 1,224 (49%) were randomly assigned to the treatment group. The intervention was reinforced between February-May 2019 (intervention reinforcement). The respondents were interviewed again between, August-September 2019 (follow-up 1 ), December-January 2020 (followup 2 ) and then finally between May to June 2020 (follow-up 3 ).
Experiment We conducted a randomized experiment with an expected sample of 2,500 female students in the final year of their undergraduate degree. We exclusively focussed on students with liberal arts majors, across 28 public colleges in urban areas of Lahore, Pakistan. We collected baseline data through face-to-face interviews, carried out by a team of experienced enumerators, in the students’ respective college.
Intervention Our intervention consists of a documentary video on actual educated women from public colleges in Lahore who have been successful in the labor market, that is, have secured a job and are satisfied in their current jobs. The documentary is intended to emphasize that setbacks are an opportunity to learn; that the process of learning is enjoyable in itself; and that economic empowerment can help both their standing in the household and household welfare. Students in the placebo group were exposed to a documentary on a subject unrelated to the treatment. In addition to the treatment or placebo videos documentary, all students in our sample were given information about ‘Job Talash’; an existing job search portal that connects job seekers with employers in metropolitan Lahore. That is, all students in our sample had access to information on existing jobs in Lahore. All randomisation - providing the treatment or the placebo intervention, as well as the order in which information on Job Asaan or the documentary was shown was randomised at the individual (student) level.
Sample and treatment assignment
Sample selection and treatment assignment at the individual level was done as follows:
- Step 1: We requested the college administration for a list of students enrolled in the final year of the bachelors program.
- Step 2: We identified the proportion of the total working sample to be drawn from each college (on the basis of enrolment data from step 1).
- Step 3: We randomly select 70% of this sample to be the actual sample and keep 30% as a replacement sample to be contacted if a sample student is not located or if she refuses to participate in the survey.
- Step 4: We collect all data on tablets using SurveyCTO (www.surveycto.com). At the time of the data collection, our software assigns the student to either the treatment or placebo group, with equal probability.
