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Project
Framework |
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The rigorous
random assignment experiments for which MDRC is
well-known are an effective and reliable way to
measure program impacts, but they are limited in
the extent to which they can open the "black
box" of participant behavior in order to fully
understand how, and why, impacts do or do not come
about. Moreover, in some circumstances, especially
when a program has already been fully implemented
and there is no "control group" available,
a random assignment experiment may not be feasible.
Building on MDRC's long tradition of methodological
innovation, the Research Methodology Initiative
aims to address the limitations of currently available
investigative techniques and develop new tools of
program design and analysis. Launched in 1999, the
Initiative is exploring the use of quantitative
and qualitative methods in the context of experimental,
quasiexperimental and mixed research designs to
rigorously study how programs are implemented, the
impacts they produce, and how their implementation
affects their impacts.
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Agenda,
Scope, and Goals
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MDRC
is developing, testing, and disseminating improved
strategies for evaluating social programs with the
goal of advancing the practice of program evaluation.
The Initiative has three main components: |
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Its impact component is exploring promising
ways to combine the use of experimental and nonexperimental
methods to move beyond the limitations of each and
thus advance our ability to measure the impacts
of programs under a wide range of conditions; |
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Its
implementation component is examining techniques
for describing how social policies are put into
operation, measuring the quality and intensity of
program treatments, and understanding the perceptions
and experiences of persons affected by programs
(including participants and staff members); and |
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Its
integration component is developing strategies
for linking implementation and impact data to help
determine what causes programs to be effective (or
not) and to produce useful information about how
to design and manage effective programs.
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Through
a series of working papers, seminars, and technical
assistance programs, the Methodology Initiative
is engaged in a broad agenda and is currently active
in: |
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The
development of a conceptual framework to guide program
implementation studies; |
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The
use of research synthesis methods to explore how
program implementation, client characteristics,
and environmental conditions influence program impacts; |
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The
use of interrupted time-series analysis and/or random
assignment of groups to study the impacts of place-based
programs; |
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The
use of instrumental variables in random assignment
experiments to study how programs create impacts
and to measure their impacts on endogenously defined
subgroups; |
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The
use of random assignment experiments to assess nonexperimental
matching and modeling procedures; |
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Identifying
and addressing the ethical, political, and administrative
issues necessary to conduct random assignment experiments
in real-world settings to evaluate social programs; |
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The
specification of the role of ethnographic methods
in program evaluation; and |
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The
development of procedures for managing and analyzing
qualitative data within multi-site, longitudinal
evaluations.
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