Randomised Controlled Trials

Carlo Barone (1, 2)

1 CRIS - Centre de recherche sur les inégalités sociales (Sciences Po, CNRS)
2 LIEPP - Laboratoire interdisciplinaire d'évaluation des politiques publiques (Sciences Po)

Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) aim at measuring the impact of a given intervention by comparing the outcomes of an experimental group (receiving the intervention) and a control group (not receiving it), to which individuals are randomly assigned. It is a useful quantitative method of ex ante evaluation, to test the impact of a program at a stage when it has not yet reached the totality of its target population (making the control group possible).

Keywords: Quantitative method; experimental method; experimental/treatment and control groups; random assignment; treatment; contamination

Domains: Humanities and Social Sciences

Carlo Barone. Randomised Controlled Trials. 2023, pp.4. ⟨hal-04021987⟩