10 posts
Recent randomized controlled trials (RCTs) refute the claim that hydroxychloroquine is a viable medical intervention for COVID-19, and show that policymakers erred in touting its effectiveness based on less rigorous studies. The lesson? It’s critical to build and prioritize…
In this report, we discuss recent findings of a federally-sponsored RCT of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Assets for Independence program. As detailed below, we believe this study illustrates an all-too-common problem in program evaluations: In…
As regular readers of our Straight Talk newsletter are aware, we focus our reports primarily on findings of randomized controlled trials (RCTs). The reason is that RCTs, when well-conducted, are widely considered the strongest method of evaluating a program’s…
Over the past five years, Arnold Ventures’ Evidence-Based Policy team has funded more than 75 RCTs, totaling approximately $50 million, to evaluate a wide range of social programs and practices (“interventions”). We focus on RCTs because, when well-conducted, they are…
For many social programs, it is important from a policy perspective to know not just whether the program produces positive effects in the short term, but whether the effects endure long enough to constitute a meaningful improvement in participants’ lives. In the case of a…
In our previous Straight Talk report, we described the great stagnation in key areas of social policy since the 1970s. To recap:
Eleven of the 13 RCTs found that the programs produced either no significant positive effects on the key targeted outcomes. Evidence based federal programs.
Program Evaluation of US Social Programs: We suggest that policymakers, foundations, and researchers view this as the central challenge in social policy.
Our team reads studies for a living and for a hobby, and has been doing so for many years. We mainly read randomized controlled trials (RCTs) because RCTs, when well-conducted, are widely considered the strongest method of evaluating a program’s effectiveness.[i] Our main…