“but it seems a lot cheaper to use existing literature on cash transfers (if appropriate) or to try to piggyback your subjective well-being questions into someone else’s cash-transfer study for an analogous population” I really like this.
You are right again that two trials would show the bias separately, but doing 2 separate trials loses the key RCT benefits of (almost) removing confounding and bias. Selecting 2 populations for different trials that are comparable is very, very difficult.
My view on whether a cash vs. SM RCT is necessary / worth the money could definitely change based on the results of a good literature review or piggyback.
“but it seems a lot cheaper to use existing literature on cash transfers (if appropriate) or to try to piggyback your subjective well-being questions into someone else’s cash-transfer study for an analogous population” I really like this.
You are right again that two trials would show the bias separately, but doing 2 separate trials loses the key RCT benefits of (almost) removing confounding and bias. Selecting 2 populations for different trials that are comparable is very, very difficult.
My view on whether a cash vs. SM RCT is necessary / worth the money could definitely change based on the results of a good literature review or piggyback.