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Category: Social Sciences

Published March 8, 2012

Spring Break Classic Posts: Thoughts on the Debate Surrounding Randomized Controlled Trials

(It’s Spring Break here this week, so I am taking the week off from blogging to work to revise a few articles and begin working on new research projects. As a result, I am re-posting old posts that some new readers might have missed but which were very popular the first time I posted them. The following was initially posted on May 25, 2011.)

Last weekend, Nicholas Kristof published a column in the New York Times in which he praised the use of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in development policy. In a fit of econ envy, Kristof even went so far as to confess that if he had to do it all over again, he would major in economics in college instead of political science.

As a result of Kristof’s column, however, the use of RCTs in development policy has come under a considerable amount of scrutiny in the development blogosphere.

Continue readingSpring Break Classic Posts: Thoughts on the Debate Surrounding Randomized Controlled Trials
Published February 16, 2012

Randomization and Inference

Experiments have become an increasingly common tool for political science researchers over the last decade, particularly laboratory experiments performed on small convenience samples. We argue that the standard normal theory statistical paradigm used in political science fails to meet the needs of these experimenters and outline an alternative approach to statistical inference based on randomization of the treatment. The randomization inference approach not only provides direct estimation of the experimenter’s quantity of interest — the certainty of the causal inference about the observed units — but also helps to deal with other challenges of small samples. We offer an introduction to the logic of randomization inference, a brief overview of its technical details, and guidance for political science experimenters about making analytic choices within the randomization inference framework. Finally, we reanalyze data from two political science experiments using randomization tests to illustrate the inferential differences that choosing a randomization inference approach can make.

That’s the abstract of a forthcoming American Journal of Political Science article by Luke Keele, Corrine McConnaughy, and Ismail White.

That being said, I really can’t wait for summer to arrive so I can finally get through my “Documents to Read” folder.

Published February 9, 2012

On the (Mis)Use of Regression Analysis: Country Music and Suicide

This article assesses the link between country music and metropolitan suicide rates. Country music is hypothesized to nurture a suicidal mood through its concerns with problems common in the suicidal population, such as marital discord, alcohol abuse, and alienation from work. The results of a multiple regression analysis of 49 metropolitan areas show that the greater the airtime devoted to country music, the greater the white suicide rate. The effect is independent of divorce, southernness, poverty, and gun availability. The existence of a country music subculture is thought to reinforce the link between country music and suicide. Our model explains 51 percent of the variance in urban white suicide rates.

That’s the abstract of an article published in Social Forces — a top-10 journal in sociology — in 1992.

Before my snark gets me into trouble: Yes, I do realize that the article was published in 1992, back when most social science researchers only had a flimsy grasp of identification and causality. I also realize it would be foolish to impose on the authors of the above-referenced article the same standards of identification we impose upon ourselves today.

Yet, I cannot help but think that someone with a lesser of understanding of causality than the average reader of this blog is bound to eventually stumble upon the abstract, think “Hey, that totally makes sense!,” and run with it.

I’m sure there are also examples of such findings in other disciplines. If you know of any, please share.

(HT: Friend and former student Norma Padron, who is doing her PhD at Yale and has just launched a nice health economics blog.)