Adaptive Trial to Identify Maximally Effective COVID Information Campaigns

What is the most effective way to conduct phone-based information campaigns to improve health behaviors critical to containing a pandemic? Researchers will conduct an adaptive randomized controlled trial to evaluate the impact of an SMS-based information campaign on the adoption of social distancing and handwashing in rural Bihar, India, six months into the COVID-19 pandemic. They will test 10 arms that vary in delivery timing and message framing, changing content to highlight gains or losses for either one’s own family or community. Testing these large number of arms lends itself to an adaptive trial approach to efficiently recover the best policy. The researchers will identify the optimal treatment separately for each targeted behavior by adaptively allocating shares across arms over 10 experimental rounds using exploration sampling. 

Read the policy brief for this project here.