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Longer Pauses Between Language Options (ATA Experiment 103)
ETH -17 -1458Last modified on December 19th, 2025 at 10:18 am
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Abstract
PxD is partnering with Ethiopia’s Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA) to help improve the effectiveness of their voice-based mobile-phone advisory service, the 8028 hotline, by conducting continuous iterations and experiments, as well as by making suggestions for improvements to and customization of the service. The service has millions of registered farmers and represents the first in Africa to be maintained by a government entity at such a large scale.
The 8028 hotline Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system uses phone key navigation. A PxD survey revealed that many farmers found the language options were presented too quickly, which made it difficult for the farmers to select their preferred language. Platform data analysis showed that approximately 15% of users failed to select a language, potentially due to the rapid pace of delivery of the options. We implemented an A/B test in which users in the treatment group experienced a longer pause than the control group experienced between the language options during registration. The intervention did not yield a statistically significant improvement in the rates of language selection or content access. -
Status
Completed
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Start date
Q4 Nov 2017
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Experiment Location
Ethiopia
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Partner Organization
Ethiopian ATA
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Agricultural season
_N/A
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Experiment type
A/B test
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Sample frame / target population
Farmers who called to 8028 for the first time (New Callers/Users)
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Sample size
67,291
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Outcome type
Knowledge, Information access
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Mode of data collection
PxD administrative data
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Research question(s)
Does increasing the pause between language options improve users’ ability to select their preferred language and access content during the initial registration call?
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Research theme
Communication technology
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Research Design
New users of the 8028 hotline service were randomly assigned to one of two groups:
- Control group: Received the standard language menu with existing pause intervals.
- Treatment group: Experienced a longer pause (2 seconds longer) between each language option.
Randomization occurred at the individual user level upon first contact with the 8028 hotline system.
We used administrative platform data to measure whether new users made a language selection and accessed content in their first call.
Study publication forthcoming.
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Results
We find no significant improvement in users’ ability to select their preferred language when a longer pause was introduced between language options. The treatment had a slightly negative effect on language selection with a 0.5 percentage point (pp) decrease in successful language selection in the treatment group (not statistically significant), which suggests that a longer pause does not facilitate the selection process. There was a negligible difference (less than 1 pp) for the proportion of users in the treatment group who accessed content in the first call, compared to users in the control group (~50%).