“Prespecification” or “preregistration” – the publication of a study’s analysis plan prior to estimating program impacts – is an important activity which has long been practiced in medical research and is happily becoming more common in randomized control trials…
Family Connects is a home visitation program for families with a newborn child, designed to increase child well-being by bridging the gap between parent needs and community resources. Originating in Durham County, North Carolina (where it was called “Durham Connects”), the…
Pediatrics—a leading scientific journal—recently published findings from a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of Minding the Baby, an early childhood home visiting program for low-income families (linked here, February 2018 issue). The study claims that the program produced a…
What Works Clearinghouse: An important—but fixable—flaw in that can make ineffective programs appear effective. Evidence based programs and evaluations.
This is the first in a series of Straight Talk reports that seeks to illustrate how “official” evidence reviews—in this case, by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)—sometimes show certain programs as effective when the evidence suggests exactly the…
I was once told that the most important question in epidemiology is, “What is the question?” The meaning behind this maxim is that you really need to know what you are asking of the data before you ask it. Then you determine whether your data can answer that question.