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Although the buzz around RCT evaluations dates from the s, we show that what we are witnessing now is a second wave of RCTs, while a first wave began in the s and ended by the early s. Drawing on content analysis snd RCTs, participant observation, and secondary sources, we compare the two waves in terms of the participants in the network of expertise required to carry out field Randomized Trial of a Control Group and and the characteristics of the projects evaluated.

The comparison demonstrates that researchers in the second wave were better positioned to navigate the political difficulties caused by randomization. What were the key differences between the two waves? What could explain the rise of RCTs in international development? This explanation does not pass muster and need not detain us for very long.

The rise and fall and rise of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in international development

Their skepticism is amply supported by evidence that medical RCTs suffer from numerous methodological shortcomings, and that political considerations played a key role in their adoption. These objections accord with the basic insight of science studies, namely, that the success of innovations cannot be explained by their prima facie superiority over others, because in the early phases of adoption such superiority is not yet evident. I agree that medical randomized controlled trials have been oversold; and even if I accept the the idea of RCT as a gold standard, I have to admit that almost all my own research is observational. On the other hand, we can port useful ideas from other fields of research, and sometimes new ideas really are better. We published the first MRP article inand I knew right away that it was a big deal—but it indeed took something like 20 years for it to become standard practice. It made me want to scream—they were so tied into classical Randomized Trial of a Control Group and theory, they seemed to have no idea that something could be learned by studying the precinct-by-precinct swing between elections.

On one hand, yes, this was a game-changing innovation that ultimately was adopted because it could do the job better than what came before.

With MRP, the job was adjusting for survey nonresponse; with RCT, the job was estimating causal effects; in both cases, the big and increasing concern was unmeasured bias. On the other hand, why did the methods become popular when they did?

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Indeed, if I consider the example of MRP, the method itself was developed by putting together two existing ideas in survey research multilevel modeling for small area estimation, and poststratification to adjust for nonresponse biasand when we came up with it, yes I thought it was the thing to do, but I also thought the idea was clear enough that it would pretty much catch on right away.

In reality, we are witnessing now a second wave of RCTs in international development, while a first wave of experiments in family planning, public health, and education in developing countries began in the s and ended by the early s.

In between the two periods, development programs were evaluated by other means. Just as an aside—I love that above sentence with three dashes.

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Dashes are great punctuation, way underused in my opinion. Good question, illustrating an interesting interaction between historical facts and social science theorizing.

The comparison demonstrates that the recent widespread adoption of RCTs is not due to their inherent technical merits nor to rhetorical and organizational strategies. Instead, it reflects the ability of actors in the second wave to overcome the political resistance to randomized assignment, which has bedeviled the first wave, and to forge an enduring link between the fields of development aid and academic economics.

Since foreign aid is about the allocation of scarce resources, the decisions of donors and policy-makers Randomized Trial of a Control Group and to be legitimized. They argue that a key aspect of the success of the second wave of RCTs was the connection to academic economics. The nudge people can keep themselves busy with Ted talks, book tours, and TV appearances while the rest of us get on with the real work. Have you seen this resent study on the redesign of summons forms in See more Is it: a. The replication issue? The overhyping of not-so-significant for non-scientific audiences? All the above?]