Does Access to Improved Menstruation Technology (Reusable Pads) Affect Female Outcomes in Sierra Leone?

Methods

Summary

The subject pool for the project will consist of all girls between the ages of 13-20 in the school who have been menstruating for at least six months. We will also be looking at girls who are in the menstruating age but haven’t had menarche yet. There will be an equal number of schools in our treatment and control groups, therefore we can make accurate comparative assessments. Each treatment arm will have 250 subjects, we will have four research arms. The total intended sample is 1000 women.

Among the randomly selected school, half will be allocated for Treatment (provision of Afripads) and the other half will be Control. We are randomizing at the school level in order to prevent any potential spillover effects, or cause jealousy between peers due to the project. Half of the subjects will be given Afripads at the beginning of the study. This includes the school girls and their mothers. The other half will be given Afripads at the end of the study. The intervention will be spread to the entire subject pool at the end of the study.

We will be conducting baseline and endline surveys among school girls, along with economic experiments that will elicit competitiveness, confidence, and risk preferences.

We will use Competition Game protocol outlined in (2016). We will be modifying the protocol to cater to the skillset of school going children in Sierra Leone. Instead of the math problems used in the original experiment, we will be using some sort of a puzzle component. We will also be using the Dictator Game, which examines altruistic behavior (Protocol).

Challenges

The biggest challenge is to make sure our distinct treatment and control groups do not have spillovers between them. Making sure that the reported rates of attendance and participation, also stay accurate and uncontaminated. 

Pre Analysis Plan

We plan on using OLS Regressions, with a Difference in Differences evaluation technique to analyze our final results. 

Hypotheses:

Null- There is no effect of menstrual product intervention in Sierra Leone on educational and subjective outcomes. 

Alternative 1- There is an effect from intervention. 

Alternative 2- There is a positive effect of the intervention.