6.10 Field experiments: Examples

  • Remedying Education: Evidence from Two Randomized Experiments in India (Banerjee et al. 2007)
    • “two randomized experiments conducted in schools in urban India. A remedial education program hired young women to teach students lagging behind in basic literacy and numeracy skills. It increased average test scores of all children in treatment schools by 0.28 standard deviation, mostly due to large gains experienced by children at the bottom of the test-score distribution. A computer-assisted learning program focusing on math increased math scores by 0.47 standard deviation. One year after the programs were over initial gains remained significant for targeted children, but they faded to about 0.10 standard deviation”
  • The Mark of a Criminal Record (Pager 2003)
    • “The present study adopts an experimental audit approach—in which matched pairs of individuals applied for real entry‐level jobs—to formally test the degree to which a criminal record affects subsequent employment opportunities.”
  • Durably Reducing Transphobia: A Field Experiment on Door-to-Door Canvassing (Broockman and Kalla 2016)
    • “Here, we show that a single approximately 10-minute conversation encouraging actively taking the perspective of others can markedly reduce prejudice for at least 3 months. We illustrate this potential with a door-to-door canvassing intervention in South Florida targeting antitransgender prejudice. Despite declines in homophobia, transphobia remains pervasive. For the intervention, 56 canvassers went door to door encouraging active perspective-taking with 501 voters at voters’ doorsteps.”
    • Started from a fraud and is exemplary in terms of reproducability
  • Field Experiments and Natural Experiments (Gerber and Green 2011)

References

Banerjee, Abhijit V, Shawn Cole, Esther Duflo, and Leigh Linden. 2007. “Remedying Education: Evidence from Two Randomized Experiments in India.” Q. J. Econ. 122 (3): 1235–64.

Broockman, David, and Joshua Kalla. 2016. “Durably Reducing Transphobia: A Field Experiment on Door-to-Door Canvassing.” Science 352 (6282): 220–24.

Gerber, Alan S, and Donald P Green. 2011. “Field Experiments and Natural Experiments.” In The Oxford Handbook of Political Science, edited by Robert E Goodin.

Pager, Devah. 2003. “The Mark of a Criminal Record.” American Journal of Sociology 108 (5): 937–75.