Thanks Rory - I think your general idea is good, and in some cases could be a good option!
I could be wrong, but from my experience working in the development world these 4 scenarios aren’t really how RCTs generally happen. Usually there will be a partnership with a RCT running NGO (like IPA) or a university department (J-PAL at MIT) where the partner organisation pays for and organise everything.
Sometimes scenario 4 could happen as part of a grant application
This doesn’t change the existence of a budget constraint, though. The partner organization, especially a grant funder like JPAL/IPA, will grant you a certain amount of their resources to use. I don’t see why you wouldn’t want to optimize the use of their resources.
100% the original post stands, in any scenario we would want to optimise use of resources. I don’t think JPAL/IPA is generally a funder though—they do the research themselves so they are the ones to convince ;).
Ah, that’s helpful data. My experience in RCTs mostly comes from One Acre Fund, where we ran lots of RCTs internally on experimental programs, or just A/B tests, but that might not be very typical!
Would be super interested to see the results of some of these RCTs / AB tests. Were any of them published apart from the Lime SMS study? We’re looking for great examples of learning orgs that do this and some studies from 1AF would be a great motivator/example.
Thanks Rory - I think your general idea is good, and in some cases could be a good option!
I could be wrong, but from my experience working in the development world these 4 scenarios aren’t really how RCTs generally happen. Usually there will be a partnership with a RCT running NGO (like IPA) or a university department (J-PAL at MIT) where the partner organisation pays for and organise everything.
Sometimes scenario 4 could happen as part of a grant application
This doesn’t change the existence of a budget constraint, though. The partner organization, especially a grant funder like JPAL/IPA, will grant you a certain amount of their resources to use. I don’t see why you wouldn’t want to optimize the use of their resources.
100% the original post stands, in any scenario we would want to optimise use of resources. I don’t think JPAL/IPA is generally a funder though—they do the research themselves so they are the ones to convince ;).
Ah, that’s helpful data. My experience in RCTs mostly comes from One Acre Fund, where we ran lots of RCTs internally on experimental programs, or just A/B tests, but that might not be very typical!
Would be super interested to see the results of some of these RCTs / AB tests. Were any of them published apart from the Lime SMS study? We’re looking for great examples of learning orgs that do this and some studies from 1AF would be a great motivator/example.