Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are an experimental form of impact evaluation in which the population receiving the program or policy intervention is chosen at random from the eligible population, and a control group is also chosen at random from the same eligible population.[1]
Further reading
Bouguen, Adrien et al. (2019) Using randomized controlled trials to estimate long-run impacts in development economics, Annual Review of Economics, vol. 11, pp. 523–561.
Karnofsky, Holden (2012) How we evaluate a study, The GiveWell Blog, August 23 (updated 2 September 2016).
Ogden, Timothy (2020) RCTs in development economics, their critics and their evolution, in Florent Bédécarrats, Isabelle Guérin & François Roubaud (eds.) Randomized Control Trials in the Field of Development, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 126–151.
- ^
White, Howard, Shagun Sabarwal & Thomas de Hoop (2014) ‘Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs)’, in Methodological Briefs: Impact Evaluation 7, Florence: UNICEF Office of Research