Growing together: assessing the peer-effects of a growth mindset intervention. (Tech Report)

Do students who did not receive the mindset intervention benefit from being in contact with students who did? This question is important from a policy perspective. Indeed, the overall effectiveness of the mindset intervention is a combination of its direct effect and its peer effects, so evidence of peer- effects would bolster the case for a wider adoption of mindset interventions. In this technical report, we study the opportunities and limits of a large scale mindset experiment for estimating spillover effects. We address methodological complications arising from the design and provide a blueprint for designing future experiments focusing on the spillover effects.