Subject confusion and task non-completion: Methodological insights from an artefactual field experiment with adolescents in India

• Published in: Journal of behavioral and experimental economics Vol. 103; p. 101986
• Main Authors: Pulickal, Anuvinda, Chakravarty, Sujoy
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Inc 01.04.2023
• Subjects: Adolescent; Artefactual field experiment; Subject confusion; Task completion; Subject confusion; Adolescent; Artefactual field experiment; C90; C93; D91; Task completion
• ISSN: 2214-8043; 2214-8051
• DOI: 10.1016/j.socec.2023.101986

•Using adolescent subjects in India we study attributes that affect task comprehension.•Females have lower degree of confusion in comprehending task rules compared to males.•Academic ability is negatively (positively) linked to confusion (task completion).•Economic status is negatively associated with completion of experimental tasks.•Higher comprehension of task rules is positively linked to completion of tasks. In the behavioral and experimental economics literature, very few experiments measure and analyze subject confusion or the completion of laboratory tasks. In this paper, we examine pre-task quiz performance in our artefactual field experiment with an adolescent subject pool in India and find that females have a lower degree of confusion in comprehending task instructions as compared to males. Furthermore, economic status is negatively associated with subject comprehension and completion of incentivized experimental tasks. Academic ability is negatively associated with subject confusion and positively associated with task completion. Finally, we find a positive association between pre-task quiz performance and the completion of incentivized tasks. This suggests that unincentivized pre-task quiz scores may act as a signal for potential non-completion of incentivized tasks in experiments, particularly with non-standard subject pools.