Implementing Randomized Field Trials in Education Report of a Workshop (2004) / Chapter Skim
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1 What is a Randomized Field Trial?
1 What is a Randomized Field Trial?
Pages 1-6
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Then they seek to test the hypothesis by comparing the average outcome for individuals in the group who were randomly assigned to receive this intervention with the average outcome for individuals in the group who do not. This method helps social scientists to attribute changes in the outcome of interest (e.g., reading achievement)
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In randomized field trials involving humans, research participants in the control group typically either continue to receive existing services or receive a different intervention. 2Tossing a coin is a useful way of explaining the situation in which the participants have a 50-50 chance of being assigned to either of two groups: the experimental or the control group.
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As discussed in Chapter 3, some school districts have used randomized lotteries to allocate school vouchers, in order to equitably distribute scarce resources when demand exceeds available funding for vouchers. In these cases, the investigator typically does not directly control the random assignment process, but as long as the process is truly random, the statistically equivalent groups that result isolate the relationship between group membership (treatment or control)
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In this report, we use the term "randomized field trial" to refer to studies that test the effectiveness of social interventions comparing experimental and control groups that have been created through random assignment. Although most of the workshop discussions focused on large-scale randomized field trials, the key elements for education research do not involve the size of the study, but the focus on questions of causation, use of randomization, and the construction of control groups that do not receive the intervention of interest.
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Most visibly, the No Child Left Behind Act, passed by Congress in 2001 and signed by the President in 2002, includes many references to "scientifically based" educational programs and services. The law defines scientifically based research as including research that "is evaluated using experimental or quasi-experimental designs in which individuals, entities, programs or activities are assigned to different conditions and with appropriate controls to evaluate the effects of the condition of interest, with a preference for random-assignment experiments, or other designs to the extent that those designs contain within-condition or across-condition controls." Furthermore, in its strategic plan for 2002-2007, the U.S.
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That report links design to the research question and, for addressing causal questions (i.e., "what works") about specified outcomes, highlights randomized field trials as the most appropriate research designs when they are feasible and ethical.
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