Randomized experiments in education: Assessing the objections to doing them

Thomas D Cook

doi:10.1080/10438590600982335

Randomized experiments in education: Assessing the objections to doing them

Thomas D Cook^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Sociology

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

11 Scopus citations

Abstract

This article analyzes a variety of reasons that are offered within the community of educational researchers to explain why so few randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have been undertaken. The article suggests strategies for dealing with most of these objections. However, some of these objections are serious enough, and the remedies sufficiently incomplete, that it is difficult to call RCTs the ‘gold standard’ of causal inference in the educational sector.

Original language	English (US)
Pages (from-to)	331-355
Number of pages	25
Journal	Economics of Innovation and New Technology
Volume	16
Issue number	5
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1080/10438590600982335
State	Published - Jan 1 2007

Keywords

Causal inference
Educational research
Random assignment

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Economics, Econometrics and Finance(all)
Management of Technology and Innovation

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10.1080/10438590600982335

Cite this

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Randomized experiments in education: Assessing the objections to doing them

Abstract

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

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