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Unit of Analysis
| individuals; classrooms/teachers; schools |
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Universe
| Research sites: The current study includes students from 30 schools from a list of 75 potential sites located in the towns of Diffa and Maine-Soroa. The following criteria were utilized for school selection: (1) Security clearance (2) Distance from NGO Office <40km (3) Sufficient numbers of teachers (more than eight teachers per school) and students (more than 120 students enrolled per school) (4) Serves a minimum of three primary grades (some schools did not serve full range of elementary grade levels). Of the 30 schools selected, 20 schools were traditional French-only schools and the other 10 schools were French-Arabic schools; and 18 schools were located near Diffa town, and 12 schools were located in Maine-Soroa town. Student composition of these schools reflect the on-going refugee crisis and ethnic/linguistic diversity of the Diffa region of Niger, serving 10-42% of refugee or internally displaced students, 0-85% Kanuri speakers, and 0-48% Hausa speakers, and 2-95% Fulfulde speakers with smaller student body speaking other languages as mother tongue. The majority of second to fourth grade students in the participating schools were academically struggling, with 75-100% of students unable to read Grade 1 level texts in French and 61-98% of students unable to solve simple subtraction problems in the screening tests. Student Sample: All second to fourth grade students in participating schools who met the eligibility criteria (ASER French reading and math scores 2 or lower) are included in the current study (53% girls, 23% refugees). Of all participants, 43% were second graders, 33% were third graders, and the remaining 24% were fourth graders. More extensive data are available for subsample of students who were randomly selected for tutoring services. |
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Time Method
| Longitudinal studies |
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Data Collector
| International Rescue Committee |
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Collector Training
| In-person training by the trainers who got trained by the investigators |
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Frequency
| baseline (November 2017) / endline (May 2018) |
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Sampling Procedure
| Year 2 will repeat the matched-pair school (n=28 ) randomized design conducted in Year 1. In Year 1, schools were matched on school and student compositional characteristics using administrative data collected from school directors and baseline ASER assessments on children in grades 2 through 4. One school per pair is randomized to the control condition, and one school to the treatment condition. In the Year 2, same treatment condition will be maintained; however, all children in grade 2 through 4, including the students who received tutoring service, will be assessed again to evaluate eligibility. Students with scores of 0, 1 or 2 on baseline ASER will be eligible for tutoring. If tutoring services are oversubscribed—which we anticipate based on last year’s ASER scores at baseline and end-line—eligible students will be randomized to the program to ensure equitability as well as leverage a natural no-treatment control group. We expect the vast majority of the 2nd grade tutoring students will be new beneficiaries, as first graders were ineligible to participate in tutoring last year. We expect approximately even numbers of new and returning beneficiaries in grades 3 and 4. |
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Major Deviations for Sample Design
| Of 30 schools participated in the prior year intervention programs, 1 school dropped out due to the deteriorated security situation. We excluded this school from the research, but still implemented the program in its matched-pair school. Some data from the matched-pair school were collected but excluded from the analysis. Therefore, we have a total of 28 schools and 87 classrooms for research puposes; and 29 schools and 89 classrooms for tutoring programs. |
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Type of Research Instrument
| structured verbal interviews; paper-and-pencil surveys; administrative data |
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Characteristics of Data Collection Situation
| All data collected for the screening test were conducted via one-on-one interview by trained teachers of the students' schools; all other student-level data were collected via one-on-one interview with trained enumerators using tablet-based survey, performance-based assessments, and scenario-based assessments; teacher data collection was conducted via paper-and-pencil survey; administrative data, including student and teacher attendance and school characteristics were reported by the head teachers. |
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Actions to Minimize Losses
| In anticipation of failture to identify the eligible student randomized for tutoring due to the lack of systematic student tracking system, we selected extra 5 children per classroom to be on a waitlist, to replace the children who we were not able to identify. |
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Weighting
| none |
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Cleaning Operations
| consistency checking across assessments through verification, wildcode checking |
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Response Rate
| Vary by variable; 100% for screening test results and administrative data (basic demographics) |
