Question

Getting teachers to come to school Elementary schools in rural India are usually small, with a single teacher. The teachers often fail to show up for work. Here is an idea for improving attendance: give the teacher a digital camera with a tamperproof time and date stamp and ask a student to take a photo of the teacher and class at the beginning and end of the day. Offer the teacher better pay for good attendance, verified by the photos. Will this work? Researchers obtained permission to use 120 rural schools in Rajasthan for an experiment to find out.

(a) Explain why it would not be a good idea to offer better pay for good attendance to the teachers in all$120$schools and then to compare this year’s attendance with last year’s.

(b) Write a few sentences describing how you would design this experiment.

Short answer

(a) It would not be a good idea to offer better pay for good attendance to the teacher as is not control group.

(b) Sixty chosen schools would receive an offer while others don't.

Step-by-step solution

Given Information

To improve the attendance, teachers are given a digital camera with a tamperproof time and date stamp and ask a student to take a photo of the teacher and class at the beginning and end of the day.

They used it in$120$rural schools in Rajasthan.

To explain why it would not be a good idea to offer better pay for good attendance to the teachers in all 120 schools and then to compare this year’s attendance with last year’s.

It is due to the fact that lurking variables evolve with time. It may be deleted from the study as its presence is unclear.

It is also possible that it may have a significant remark but it is not included in predictor variables taken under consideration.

To write structure of experiment

The permission is given to $120$rural schools in Rajasthan.

• Split the schools into two groups arbitrarily.
• In one group, pay teachers higher for their participation.
• Do it little less in other group.
• Compare the attendance.