Randomized Controlled Trials in The Social Sciences
The use of RCTs in social sciences is a highly contested issue. Some writers from a medical or health background have argued that existing research in a range of social science disciplines lacks rigour, and should be improved by greater use of randomized control trials. The issue has been particularly controversial in transport studies, with some writers arguing that public spending on programmes such as school travel plans could not be justified unless their efficacy is demonstrated by randomized controlled trials. Graham-Rowe and colleagues reviewed 77 evaluations of transport interventions found in the literature, categorising them into 5 "quality levels". They concluded that most of the studies were of low quality and advocated the use of randomized controlled trials wherever possible in future transport research.
Melia took issue with these conclusions, arguing that claims about the advantages of RCTs, in establishing causality and avoiding bias, have been exaggerated. He proposed the following 8 criteria for the use of RCTs in contexts where interventions must change human behaviour to be effective:
The intervention:
- Has not been applied to all members of a unique group of people (e.g. the population of a whole country, all employees of a unique organisation etc.)
- Is applied in a context or setting similar to that which applies to the control group
- Can be isolated from other activities – and the purpose of the study is to assess this isolated effect
- Has a short timescale between its implementation and maturity of its effects
And the causal mechanisms:
- Are either known to the researchers, or else all possible alternatives can be tested
- Do not involve significant feedback mechanisms between the intervention group and external environments
- Have a stable and predictable relationship to exogenous factors
- Would act in the same way if the control group and intervention group were reversed
Read more about this topic: Randomized Controlled Trial
Famous quotes containing the words social sciences, controlled, trials, social and/or sciences:
“The new supplants the old. Yet men’s minds are stuffed with outworn bunk. Educating the young in the latest findings of authorities and scholars in the social sciences is important. It is equally important to devise ways and means for aiding the middle-aged and old to reexamine hang-over unscientific doctrines and ideas in the light of recent discovery and research.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“Science is a system of statements based on direct experience, and controlled by experimental verification. Verification in science is not, however, of single statements but of the entire system or a sub-system of such statements.”
—Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970)
“All trials are trials for one’s life, just as all sentences are sentences of death.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“English literature is a kind of training in social ethics.... English trains you to handle a body of information in a way that is conducive to action.”
—Marilyn Butler (b. 1937)
“Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. The power of invention has been conferred by nature upon few, and the labour of learning those sciences which may, by mere labour, be obtained, is too great to be willingly endured; but every man can exert some judgment as he has upon the works of others; and he whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of critic.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)