James Chu

Columbia University | CU · Department of Sociology

Megastudies – experiments that test many treatments simultaneously, using the same outcomes, control condition, and sample – are a promising tool that can provide unique insights, relative to other research designs. We identify five critical decisions in designing megastudies and suggest potential solutions for each.

Concern over democratic erosion has led to a proliferation of proposed interventions to strengthen democratic attitudes in the United States. Resource constraints, however, prevent implementing all proposed interventions. One approach to identify promising interventions entails leveraging domain experts, who have knowledge regarding a given field,...

There is substantial concern about democratic backsliding in the United States. Evidence includes notably high levels of animosity toward out-partisans and support for undemocratic practices (SUP) among the general public. Much less is known, however, about the views of elected officials-even though they influence democratic outcomes more directly....

Effectively addressing public health crises like the COVID-19 pandemic requires persuading the mass public to change their behavior in significant ways. Many efforts to encourage behavior change–such as public service announcements, social media posts, and billboards–involve short, persuasive appeals, yet the effectiveness of these messages is uncl...

Deep partisan conflict in the mass public threatens the stability of American democracy. We conducted a megastudy (n=32,059) testing 25 interventions designed by academics and practitioners to reduce Americans’ partisan animosity and anti-democratic attitudes. We find nearly every intervention reduced partisan animosity, most strongly by highlighti...

Research has documented labor conflict within foreign-owned, and especially Chinese-owned, manufacturing firms in sub-Saharan economies. Yet, systematic comparisons of foreign versus domestic firms are rare, and it remains unclear whether labor conflict is a phenomenon that affects emerging industries or is specific to foreign firms. Drawing on a l...

There is widespread concern that rising affective polarization—particularly dislike for outpartisans—exacerbates Americans’ anti-democratic attitudes. Accordingly, scholars and practitioners alike have invested great effort in developing depolarization interventions that reduce affective polarization. Critically, however, it remains unclear whether...

To maximize productivity, manufacturers must organize and equip their workforces to efficiently handle variable workloads. Their success depends on their ability to assign experienced and skilled workers to specialized tasks and coordinate work on production lines. Worker turnover may disrupt such efforts. We use staffing, productivity, and pay dat...

Containing the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States requires mobilizing a large majority of the mass public to vaccinate, but many Americans are hesitant or opposed to vaccination. A significant predictor of vaccine attitudes in the United States is religiosity, with more-religious individuals expressing more distrust in science and being less li...

Containing the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. requires mobilizing a large majority of the mass public to vaccinate, but many Americans are hesitant or opposed to vaccination. A significant predictor of vaccine attitudes in the U.S. is religiosity, with more religious individuals expressing more distrust in science and being less likely to get vaccin...

Overcoming the COVID-19 pandemic requires motivating the vast majority of Americans to get vaccinated. However, vaccination rates have become politically polarized, and a substantial proportion of Republicans have remained vaccine hesitant for months. Here, we explore how endorsements by party elites affect Republicans’ COVID-19 vaccination intenti...

There is widespread concern that rising affective polarization – dislike for members of the opposing party – is exacerbating a range of anti-democratic attitudes, such as support for undemocratic practices, undemocratic candidates, and partisan violence. Accordingly, scholars and practitioners alike have invested great effort in developing depolari...

Overcoming the COVID-19 pandemic requires motivating the vast majority of Americans to be vaccinated. However, vaccination rates have become politically polarized and a substantial proportion of Republicans have remained vaccine-hesitant for months. Here, we explore how endorsements by party elites affect Republicans’ COVID-19 vaccine intentions an...

Policymakers in developing countries have prioritized the mass expansion of vocational education and training (VET). This study examines whether the quality of VET in developing countries increases by investing greater resources per student. To achieve this goal, we examine the impacts of attending model schools (which have far more resources per s...

Preventing the spread of COVID-19 requires persuading the vast majority of the public to significantly change their behavior in numerous, costly ways. However, it is unclear which persuasive strategies are most effective at convincing people who are not fully compliant to take recommended actions, such as wearing a mask and staying home more often....

Studies suggest that students’ prior performance can shape subsequent teacher evaluations, but the magnitude of reputational effects and their implications for educational inequality remain unclear. Existing scholarship presents two major perspectives that exist in tension: do teachers primarily use reputational information as a temporary signal th...

China's rapid development has led to an unprecedented increase in migration rates as an ever-growing number of rural residents migrate to urban areas to seek better job opportunities and help alleviate family poverty. Economic pressures and structural restrictions force many of these migrant workers to leave their children behind in their rural hom...

We present results of a randomized trial testing alternative approaches of mapping student achievement into rewards for teachers. Teachers in 216 schools in western China were assigned to performance pay schemes where teacher performance was assessed by one of three different methods. We find that teachers offered “pay-for-percentile”? incentives o...

Educational tracks create differential expectations of student ability, raising concerns that the negative stereotypes associated with lower tracks might threaten student performance. The authors test this concern by drawing on a field experiment enrolling 11,624 Chinese vocational high school students, half of whom were randomly primed about their...

An increasing number of policy makers in developing countries have made the mass expansion of upper-secondary vocational education and training (VET) a top priority. The goal of this study is to examine whether VET fulfills these objectives of building skills and abilities along multiple dimensions and further identify which school-level factors he...

Inequalities in college access are a major concern for policymakers in both developed and developing countries. Policymakers in China have largely tried to address these inequalities by helping disadvantaged students successfully transition from high school to college. However, they have paid less attention to the possibility that inequalities in c...

The goal of this study is to examine whether promising a conditional cash transfer (conditional on matriculation) at the start of junior high school increases the rate at which disadvantaged students matriculate into high school. Based on a randomised controlled trial (RCT) involving 1418 disadvantaged (economically poor) students in rural China, w...

We present results of a randomized trial testing alternative approaches of mapping student achievement into rewards for teachers. Teachers in 216 schools in western China were assigned to performance pay schemes where teacher performance was assessed by one of three different methods. We find that teachers offered “pay-for-percentile” incentives (B...

An alarming number of students drop out of junior high school in developing countries. In this study, we examine the impacts of providing a social–emotional learning (SEL) program on the dropout behavior and learning anxiety of students in the first two years of junior high. We do so by analyzing data from a randomized controlled trial involving 70...

Although a large number of students around the world attend vocational schools, there is little evidence about what factors matter for learning in these schools. Using data on approximately 1,400 vocational students in one eastern province in China, we employ a student fixed-effects model to identify whether teacher enterprise experience, direct oc...

Although a large number of students around the world attend vocational schools, there is little evidence about what factors matter for learning in these schools. Using data on approximately 1,400 vocational students in one eastern province in China, we employ a student fixed-effects model to identify whether teacher enterprise experience, direct oc...

Students in rural China are dropping out of secondary school at troubling rates. While there is considerable quantitative research on this issue, no systematic effort has been made to assess the deeper reasons behind student decision making through a mixed-methods approach. This article seeks to explore the prevalence, correlates and potential reas...

China's rapid development and urbanization have induced large numbers of rural residents to migrate from their homes to urban areas in search of better job opportunities. Parents typically leave their children behind with a caregiver, creating a new, potentially vulnerable subpopulation of left-behind children in rural areas. A growing number of po...

A number of developing countries are currently promoting vocational education and training (VET) as a way to build human capital and strengthen economic growth. The primary aim of this study is to understand whether VET at the high school level contributes to human capital development in one of those countries—China. To fulfill this aim, we draw on...

Teacher quality is an important factor in improving student achievement. As such, policymakers have constructed a number of different credentials to identify high quality teachers. Unfortunately, few of the credentials used in developing countries have been validated (in terms of whether teachers holding such credentials actually improve student ac...

Background Junior high dropout rates are up to 25% in poor, rural areas of China. Although existing studies have examined how factors such as high tuition and opportunity costs contribute to dropout, fewer studies have explored the relationship between dropout rates and mental health in rural China. The overall goal of this study is to examine the...

Using data collected in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, this paper identifies differences in student backgrounds and levels of school resources accessed between migrant students in private migrant schools and those in public urban schools. We then quantify differences in academic achievement between students in these two different schooling systems an...

The article discusses the impacts of building elite high schools for students from disadvantaged areas. Thousands of studies from developing countries have attempted to assess the impacts of interventions on the educational outcomes of disadvantaged students. These have included demand-side interventions, which seek to provide disadvantaged student...

The goal of this study is to examine whether promising a conditional cash transfer (conditional on matriculation) at the start of junior high school increases the rate at which disadvantaged students matriculate into high school. Based on a randomised controlled trial (RCT) involving 1418 disadvantaged (economically poor) students in rural China, w...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore whether an in-service life teacher training program can improve boarding students’ health, behavior, and academic performance. Design/methodology/approach – The authors conducted a cluster-randomized controlled trial to measure the effect of life teacher training on student health, behavior, and ac...

A significant gap remains between rural and urban students in the rate of admission to senior high school. One reason for this gap might be the high levels of tuition and fees for senior high school. By reducing students' expectations of attending high school, high levels of tuition and fees could be reducing student academic performance in junior...

Aiming to provide better education facilities and improve the educational attainment of poor rural students, China’s government has been merging remote rural primary schools to centralized village, town, or county schools since the late 1990s. To accompany the policy, boarding facilities have been constructed that allow (mandate) primary school-age...

Recent studies have shown that only about two-thirds of the students from poor, rural areas in China finish junior high school and enter high school. One factor that may be behind the low rates of high school attendance is that students may be misinformed about the returns to schooling or lack career planning skills. We therefore conduct a cluster-...

The rapid expansion of enrollment capacity in China's colleges since the late 1990s has come at the price of high tuition hikes. China's government has put forth financial aid programs to enable poor students to access higher education. Although studies have shown that poor high school students are indeed able to attend college when their test scor...

Drawing on a survey of 106 secondary vocational schools and 7309 students in two provinces of China, this descriptive paper assesses whether vocational schooling is measuring up to government benchmarks for quality and whether poor students are able to access quality schools. We find that secondary vocational schools have met government benchmarks...

Students from poor, rural areas of China receive less secondary schooling than their urban peers in part because of high direct and opportunity costs. This study uses a randomized controlled trial to estimate the effectiveness of providing early commitment for financial aid (ECFA) in mitigating secondary schooling costs among poor ninth graders (ei...