Randomized Experiments for Planning and Testing Projects in Developing Countries

Increased use of randomized experiments to evaluate social programs throughout the world has been a major advance in evaluation research. This article focuses on determining which program evaluations are appropriate or feasible for randomized experiments. These threshold conditions include: (1) the present practice must need improvement; (2) the efficacy of the proposed intervention(s) must be uncertain; (3) there should be no simpler alternatives; (4) the results must be potentially important for policy; and (5) the design must meet the ethical standards of both the researchers and the service providers. To illustrate the issues involved and examine some of the innovative research designs for addressing them, experiments from Barbados, China, Colombia, Kenya, India, Israel, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Taiwan, and the U.S. are reviewed.

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