IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cdl/ucscec/qt6qv9j440.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Instructional interventions for improving COVID-19 knowledge, attitudes, behaviors: Evidence from a large-scale RCT in India

Author

Listed:
  • Mistree, Dinsha
  • Loyalka, Prashant
  • Fairlie, Robert
  • Bhuradia, Ashutosh
  • Angrish, Manyu
  • Lin, Jason
  • Karoshi, Amar
  • Yen, Sara J
  • Mistri, Jamsheed
  • Bayat, Vafa

Abstract

Seeking ways to encourage broad compliance with health guidelines during the pandemic, especially among youth, we test two hypotheses pertaining to the optimal design of instructional interventions for improving COVID-19-related knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors. We randomly assigned 8376 lower-middle income youth in urban India to three treatments: a concentrated and targeted fact-based, instructional intervention; a longer instructional intervention that provided the same facts along with underlying scientific concepts; and a control. Relative to existing efforts, we find that both instructional interventions increased COVID-19-related knowledge immediately after intervention. Relative to the shorter fact-based intervention, the longer intervention resulted in sustained improvements in knowledge, attitudes, and self-reported behavior. Instead of reducing attention and comprehension by youth, the longer scientific based treatment appears to have increased understanding and retention of the material. The findings are instrumental to understanding the design of instruction and communication in affecting compliance during this and future pandemics.

Suggested Citation

  • Mistree, Dinsha & Loyalka, Prashant & Fairlie, Robert & Bhuradia, Ashutosh & Angrish, Manyu & Lin, Jason & Karoshi, Amar & Yen, Sara J & Mistri, Jamsheed & Bayat, Vafa, 2021. "Instructional interventions for improving COVID-19 knowledge, attitudes, behaviors: Evidence from a large-scale RCT in India," Santa Cruz Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt6qv9j440, Department of Economics, UC Santa Cruz.
    • Handle: RePEc:cdl:ucscec:qt6qv9j440
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/6qv9j440.pdf;origin=repeccitec
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Anderson, Michael L., 2008. "Multiple Inference and Gender Differences in the Effects of Early Intervention: A Reevaluation of the Abecedarian, Perry Preschool, and Early Training Projects," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 103(484), pages 1481-1495.
    2. Fryer, Roland G., 2016. "Information, non-financial incentives, and student achievement: Evidence from a text messaging experiment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 144(C), pages 109-121.
    3. Damgaard, Mette Trier & Nielsen, Helena Skyt, 2018. "Nudging in education," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 313-342.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Allen, James & Mahumane, Arlete & Riddell, James & Rosenblat, Tanya & Yang, Dean & Yu, Hang, 2022. "Teaching and incentives: Substitutes or complements?," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    2. Holden, Stein T. & Katengeza, Samson & Tione, Sarah & Tilahun, Mesfin, 2022. "Knowledge, beliefs, perceptions, and behavior related to the corona (COVID-19) pandemic among university students in Malawi," CLTS Working Papers 7/22, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Centre for Land Tenure Studies.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Burgess, Simon & Metcalfe, Robert & Sadoff, Sally, 2021. "Understanding the response to financial and non-financial incentives in education: Field experimental evidence using high-stakes assessments," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    2. Esther Gehrke & Friederike Lenel & Claudia Schupp, 2023. "Occupational Aspirations and Investments in Education: Experimental Evidence from Cambodia," CESifo Working Paper Series 10608, CESifo.
    3. Gehrke, Esther & Lenel, Friederike & Schupp, Claudia, 2022. "Interest exploration and investments in education: Experimental evidence from Cambodia," OSF Preprints k6tqr, Center for Open Science.
    4. Andrés Ham & Juanita Ruiz & Oscar Iván Pineda-Diaz & Natalia Iriarte-Tovar & Juan Sebastián Cifuentes & María Fernanda Rodríguez-Camacho & Laura Feliza Vélez, 2022. "Promoting in-person attendance for early childhood services after the COVID-19 pandemic using text messages," Documentos de trabajo 20773, Escuela de Gobierno - Universidad de los Andes.
    5. Bonilla-Mejía, Leonardo & Bottan, Nicolas L. & Ham, Andrés, 2019. "Information policies and higher education choices experimental evidence from Colombia," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    6. Peter, Frauke & Spiess, C. Katharina & Zambre, Vaishali, 2021. "Informing students about college: Increasing enrollment using a behavioral intervention?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 190(C), pages 524-549.
    7. Thomas Breda & Julien Grenet & Marion Monnet & Clémentine van Effenterre, 2023. "How Effective are Female Role Models in Steering Girls towards STEM? Evidence from French High Schools," PSE Working Papers halshs-01713068, HAL.
    8. Cheng Yuan & Xiaoxiao Wang & Li Lin, 2023. "Why Do Financially Illiterate Students Perceive Lower Education Returns? Evidence From a Survey in Rural China," SAGE Open, , vol. 13(2), pages 21582440231, June.
    9. Minahil Asim & Ronak Jain & Vatsal Khandelwal, 2024. "Great expectations? Experimental evidence from schools in Pakistan," ECON - Working Papers 454, Department of Economics - University of Zurich.
    10. Karen Macours & Norbert Schady & Renos Vakis, 2012. "Cash Transfers, Behavioral Changes, and Cognitive Development in Early Childhood: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 4(2), pages 247-273, April.
    11. Garret Christensen & Edward Miguel, 2018. "Transparency, Reproducibility, and the Credibility of Economics Research," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 56(3), pages 920-980, September.
    12. Achyuta Adhvaryu & Namrata Kala & Anant Nyshadham, 2018. "The Skills to Pay the Bills: Returns to On-the-job Soft Skills Training," NBER Working Papers 24313, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Bos, Johannes M. & Shonchoy, Abu S. & Ravindran, Saravana & Khan, Akib, 2024. "Early childhood human capital formation at scale," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 231(C).
    14. Gibbons, Stephen & Silva, Olmo & Weinhardt, Felix, 2017. "Neighbourhood Turnover and Teenage Attainment," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 15(4), pages 746-783.
    15. Cavalletti, Barbara & Corsi, Matteo & Persico, Luca & di Bella, Enrico, 2021. "Public university orientation for high-school students. A quasi-experimental assessment of the efficiency gains from nudging better career choices," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    16. Bandiera, Oriana. & Buehren, Niklas. & Burgess, Robin & Goldstein, Markus P., & Gulesci, Selim. & Rasul, Imran. & Sulaiman, Munshi., 2015. "Women’s economic empowerment in action : evidence from a randomized control trial in Africa," ILO Working Papers 994874053402676, International Labour Organization.
    17. Pascaline Dupas & Anthony Keats & Jonathan Robinson, 2019. "The Effect of Savings Accounts on Interpersonal Financial Relationships: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Rural Kenya," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 129(617), pages 273-310.
    18. Ye, Xiaoyang & Zhai, Muxin & Feng, Li & Xie, A’na & Wang, Weimin & Wu, Hongbin, 2022. "Still want to be a doctor? Medical student dropout in the era of COVID-19," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 195(C), pages 122-139.
    19. Martin Beraja & Andrew Kao & David Y Yang & Noam Yuchtman, 2023. "Ai-Tocracy," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 138(3), pages 1349-1402.
    20. Cantoni, Enrico & Gazzè, Ludovica & Schafer, Jerome, 2021. "Turnout in concurrent elections: Evidence from two quasi-experiments in Italy," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cdl:ucscec:qt6qv9j440. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Lisa Schiff (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ecucsus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.