Trial oversight
The design was approved by the Economics Departmental Research Ethics Committee (DREC) of the Social Science Division of the University of Oxford with the University of Ghana recognizing the ethics oversight of the University of Oxford DREC. The study was registered on the American Economic Association (AEA) registry for randomized social experiments (The CUREC protocol and relevant amendments are available online (along with the data and code). There was no deviation from the CUREC protocol. Additional details on the design were registered in a statistical analysis plan at 10.1257/rct.8775. The analysis in this paper focuses only on the primary outcomes registered on 10.1257/rct.8775.The sample, the specific unit of randomization, the randomization methods and the planned analyses were pre-registered on 10 January 2022 before the phase I intervention of the trial. It is a publicly available statistical plan (10.1257/rct.8775). We followed the analysis plan for the primary outcomes outlined in the pre-registered plan.Here we focus on the direct effects of the intervention on the primary outcomes specified in the AEA registration. The statistical analysis plan also discusses the analysis of pre-registered indirect spillover effects that were incorporated into the initial design. A more extensive follow-up campaign aimed at measuring additional spillover effects will be conducted along with various supplementary analyses. Results of these are left for follow-on work.