From d1d8deccbf20802fc58388a0a420397a78aee1e5 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: =?UTF-8?q?Nu=C3=B1o=20Sempere?= Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2018 20:23:25 +0200 Subject: [PATCH] Update 1-Current-Evidence.md --- ESPR-Evaluation/1-Current-Evidence.md | 5 ++++- 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/ESPR-Evaluation/1-Current-Evidence.md b/ESPR-Evaluation/1-Current-Evidence.md index 1516c7a..9e0cf20 100644 --- a/ESPR-Evaluation/1-Current-Evidence.md +++ b/ESPR-Evaluation/1-Current-Evidence.md @@ -1,4 +1,4 @@ -# On a possile RCT for ESPR. +# On an RCT for ESPR. ## Introduction @@ -20,6 +20,9 @@ The first study notes that a control group would be a difficult thing to impleme But I feel like that is only partially sufficient. The magnitude of the effect found could be wildly overestimated; MIT's Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab provides the following slides [1]: +![](https://nunosempere.github.io/ESPR-Evaluation/Pre-post-1.jpg) +![](https://nunosempere.github.io/ESPR-Evaluation/Pre-post-2.jpg) + I find them scary; depending on the method used to test your effect, a simple pre-post comparison can get an effect size that is 4-5 times as great, or about as great, in the other direction. The effects the study finds, f.ex. the one most prominently displayed in CFAR's webpage, an increased life satisfaction of 0.17 standard deviations (i.e., going from 50 to 56.75%) are small enough Thus, I feel that an RCT could be delayed on the strength of the evidence that CFAR currently has, including its logical model (see below), but not indefinitely. In particular, if CFAR had plans for more ambitious expansion, it would be a good idea to run an RCT before. If MIT's JPAL, didn't specialize on poverty interventions, I would suggest teaming up with them, and it seems like a good idea to try anyways. JPAL would provide strategies like the following: we can randomly admit people for either this year or the next, and take as the control the group which has been left waiting. It is not clear to me why this hasn't been done yet.