Curbing adult student attrition: Evidence from a field experiment

Roughly 20% of adults in the OECD lack basic numeracy and literacy skills. In the UK, many colleges offer fully government subsidized adult education programs to improve these skills. Constructing a unique dataset consisting of weekly attendance records for 1179 students, we find that approximately 25% of learners stop attending these programs in the first ten weeks and that average attendance rates deteriorate by 20% in that time. We implement a large‐scale field experiment in which we send encouraging text messages to students. Our initial results show that these simple text messages reduce the proportion of students that stop attending by 36% and lead to a 7% increase in average attendance relative to the control group. The effects on attendance rates persist through the three weeks of available data following the initial intervention

Data for Biketown trial

Data used in the analysis for the BIKETOWN tria

Replication Data for: Free riding or discounted riding? How the framing of a bike share offer impacts offer-redemption

This data set contains three .csv files and one .txt file, which contains the code used in R to produce the results shown in the paper. The three .csv files are: PortlandALL (all the data in one place). PortlandNewDocks (only the subset of data for residents with a new station built near their existing home). And PortlandNewMovers (only the subset of data for residents who have newly moved to the area). These are in three separate files as the author is not proficient in using R and found it easier to work with three different datasets

Curbing adult student attrition: Evidence from a field experiment Curbing adult student attrition: Evidence from a field experiment* Curbing adult student attrition: Evidence from a field experiment *

Abstract Finding a job, especially in a recovering economy, is challenging and success is reliant upon effective job-search activity. Jobseekers Allowance (JSA) welfare benefit claimants in the United Kingdom have many competing options available to them in terms of how they direct their efforts in looking for work. Often it is hard to determine which is most productive. Unsurprisingly, Jobcentres -the organisations that support JSA claimants during their unemployment -themselves have very strong links to the labour market. For example, they are often invited to run recruitment events in direct partnership with large employers seeking to hire in bulk. At Bedford Jobcentre, we observe that, despite the relatively high likelihood of gaining work from attending such events, jobseeker attendance rates are still low and, instead, we can only assume that jobseekers may be taking part in less productive work search activities. This paper reports the results of a randomised control trial designed to test the effectiveness of mobile phone text messaging in compelling jobseekers in the Bedford area to attend such events. Tailored text messages are found to significantly increase the likelihood of attendance. We find text messages to be particularly effective when they evoke a sense of reciprocity in the recipient. Electronic version: Address for correspondence CMPO 2 Priory Road, Bristol BS8 1TX www.bristol.ac.uk/cmpo/ [email protected] Tel +4