Principal investigator: Adriano Valladão Pires Ribeiro
Article title: NEGOTIATING A BETTER FUTURE: HOW INTERPERSONAL SKILLS FACILITATE INTERGENERATIONAL INVESTMENT
Article authors: Nava Ashraf, Natalie Bau, Corinne Low and Kathleen McGinn
Location of the intervention: Lusaka, Zambia
Sample size: 3.146 teenagers
Sector: Education
Type of Intervention: Effect of the negotiation techniques training program
Primary variable of interest: Registration number
Evaluation method: Experimental Evaluation (RCT)
Policy Problem
The returns on investments in children's education are only seen after many years, and enormous restrictions such as increases in school fees lead to a high dropout rate at the end of primary school. This is a problem faced by teenage girls in Zambia, where, if parents do not correctly internalize the benefits of their daughters' schooling, it can lead to lower investments in education than desirable; that is, a girl may end up studying less than she should according to her aptitudes. The end result would be the exacerbation of issues related to economic development and social well-being.
Evaluation Context
A possible solution could come from empowering young women to make decisions about how much to invest in their education, especially by exploring the mutual relationship with their guardians to generate joint gains. Despite a high degree of dependence on their parents, there is room for adolescent girls to negotiate and influence their guardians' decisions, not merely being passive recipients of parental decisions. Based on this idea, a two-week training program was developed for adolescent girls in Zambia that taught them negotiation skills, acknowledging the reality of the paternalistic environment in which they live and the limited resources available for education.
Intervention Details
The study was conducted among 41 schools in Lusaka, Zambia, with 3.146 eighth-grade girls, the average age of 13-14 years, a period with the highest dropout rate. These schools were large enough in terms of student numbers to allow randomization among their students, and participants had parental or guardian approval to participate. Subsequently, 12 schools were randomly selected and did not receive any program (pure control group). The remaining 29 schools were selected to receive the treatments, dividing their students into three mutually exclusive groups: the control, the safe space, and the negotiation.
The control group would participate in the program only at a later stage. The program applied to the negotiation group consisted of 6 two-hour training sessions, including activities such as group discussions, narratives, games, and classic texts from negotiation literature, and was entirely taught by women. Attendance was high, averaging 4,8 out of 6 possible sessions. The classes aimed to help the teenagers understand their potential to influence others' decisions without violating cultural norms or disrespecting elders. The main factor was recognizing situations that would lead to gains for all parties and proposing alternatives without confrontation with the person in charge; that is, it focused on cooperation instead of bargaining. The safe space group, in turn, was designed to have the same individual empowerment effects as the negotiation group, but without teaching negotiation skills. It had the same number of classes, with the same instructors, but did not include the negotiation component in its activities.
Based on the program design described above, negotiation training would help teenage girls understand the decision-making process of their parents and help them find opportunities for improvement for everyone. Individual empowerment, however, would subject parents to a pro-female mindset and could increase bias in favor of their daughters. Furthermore, time spent in an environment with only other girls under female leadership could influence the young woman's ideal role models and impact decisions such as pregnancy prevention, school completion, entry into the job market, career pursuits, and conformity to cultural norms. A survey with the young women and their parents was conducted after 3 and 4 months of the program to identify changes in the daughter's behavior at home.
Methodology Details
The participant selection method and program design allow for the measurement of the program's impact, isolating the effects of both individual empowerment and the teaching of negotiation techniques. Educational outcomes were estimated for the three years following the program using enrollment numbers and study shifts. Enrollment numbers measure students who registered in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh grades, while morning classes are considered to be of higher quality compared to afternoon classes in Zambia.
By randomizing the selection of participating schools and students, it is possible to compare the average results of the groups that received some treatment (negotiation or individual empowerment) with the control and pure control groups, or among themselves. Other information such as the students' socioeconomic characteristics, language proficiency, age, ethnicity, and the schools they attend are analyzed together so that the extracted effect is not confounded with any other relevant factor. Therefore, the difference between the groups in the variables studied can, in fact, be attributed to the applied program.
Results
The results of the exercise described above indicate a positive effect between negotiation and enrollment numbers, with even greater effects after the transition to secondary education. The negotiation treatment increases enrollments in the tenth and eleventh grades by between 3,5 and 4,4 percentage points, approximately a 10% increase. The greater effect in secondary education is in line with the high dropout rate at the end of primary education (ninth grade) and reveals a lasting impact. As for the space group, the effect on enrollment numbers was inconclusive; it cannot be ruled out that the result is different from zero or equal to that of the negotiation group.
Regarding enrollment in the morning shift, the adolescent girls who participated in the negotiation group increased their chances. In the eleventh grade, this group had a 4 percentage point increase in the probability of attending the morning school period, which represents a 16% higher value when compared to the control group. The explanation for this result comes from the hypothesis that some girls with aptitude suffered external restrictions, such as financial ones, and managed to overcome this disadvantage due to the treatment. The result for the safe space group is close to zero and, this time, conclusively different from the negotiation group.
Finally, research conducted with the guardians after the program's completion identified changes in the adolescents' behavior following negotiation training. The young women were considered more respectful and concerned about all members of the household, consistent with the idea of increased cooperation and reciprocity. Comparatively, the daughters did not become more impulsive or have difficulty controlling their behavior; that is, negotiation did not negatively affect the adolescents' conduct regarding respect for their guardians. Furthermore, the household chores performed by the young women in the negotiation group were mainly carried out on Fridays, a day less likely to require schoolwork or studying for exams.
Lessons in Public Policy
Based on the results presented, it can be concluded that the two treatments act differently on the students. Teaching negotiation techniques, a non-cognitive skill, proved relevant in enabling the adolescents to overcome their financial and cultural constraints, thus sustainably increasing school enrollment and investment in education. Therefore, in addition to not being associated with any negative changes in the young women's behavior, negotiation training could be made mandatory in school curricula.
Reference
ASHRAF, Nava; BAU, Natalie; LOW, Corinne; MCGINN, Kathleen. “Negotiating a Better Future: How Interpersonal Skills Facilitate Intergenerational Investment”. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 135, Issue 2, May 2020, Pages 1095–1151, 2020.
