Active Tracking Attrition Mitigation
RCTJournal Article
High rates of student absenteeism, urban migration, and local civil unrest in developing contexts lead to panel attrition that can severely bias impact evaluation estimates.
Picture this
Dispatching field teams directly to children's homes when they miss school testing operates like a home delivery service tracking down uncollected mail to ensure every package is accounted for.
What the evidence says
Attrition was maintained at 3.4% to 7.7% across most study arms (except Vadodara Year 1 at 17-18% due to communal riots), with attritor pretest scores showing no significant difference between treatment and control groups.
- Who was studied
- N = 12,855 (Year 1) and N = 21,936 (Year 2) primary students in Mumbai and Vadodara, India (including tracking during major civil unrest in 2002).
- How
- Active field tracking protocol utilizing repeat school visits and direct home testing of absent students.
What to do
Deploy direct home-visit testing protocols for absent participants to minimize differential attrition bias in field experiments.
From the source
"To minimize attrition, the testing team returned to the schools multiple times, and children who still failed to appear were tracked down at home and, if found, were administered the same test."
Remedying Education: Evidence from Two Randomized Experiments in India