Social Experiments Evaluating Public Programs With Experimental Methods [Paperback]

Written in a friendly, how-to manner, Social Experiments provides a basic understanding of how to design and implement social experiments and how to interpret their results. Through illustrative examples, the author provides a grounding in the experimental method and gives advice on: designs that best address alternative policy questions; maximizing the precision of the estimates; implementing the experiment in the field; data collection; estimating and interpreting program impacts, costs, and benefits; dealing with biases; and the use and misuse of experimental results in the policy process.Written in a friendly, how-to manner, Social Experiments provides a basic understanding of how to design and implement social experiments and how to interpret their results. Through illustrative examples, the author provides a grounding in the experimental method and gives advice on: designs that best address alternative policy questions; maximizing the precision of the estimates; implementing the experiment in the field; data collection; estimating and interpreting program impacts, costs, and benefits; dealing with biases; and the use and misuse of experimental results in the policy process.Why Experiment? The Rationale and History of Social Experiments
Basic Concepts and Principles of Social Experimentation
Alternative Random Assignment Models
Sample Design
Implementation and Data Collection
Analysis
Social Experimentation and the Policy Process