Paving the road for RCTs in the future?

Even though RCTs in international development are getting more attention, there is still a need for improvement. One of the main themes that I came across during my interviews was the lack of available infrastructure to conduct RCTs. There aren’t many infrastructures that are built to be shared thus addressing this problem and collecting best practices can lower the entry barriers for newcomers to the field.

The main aim of this section is to gather all the possible steps to be taken to increase the efficiency of the field of RCTs. I try to address how we can build the infrastructure to enhance the way for faster, cheaper, easier RCTs in the future. This section does not have any best practices on how to run an RCT design but it gives you ideas on how you can make the most out of your research by sharing with other people in the field.

General Recommendation

• Inadequate reporting of RCTs has been a problem in the development of economics. CONSORT guidelines is a 25-item checklist with a flow chart that aims to set up minimum requirements for adequate reporting of RCTs in medical trials (CONSORT, 2010). RCTs in development economics are still a relatively new field thus they don’t have set guidelines like CONSORT guidelines. Deriving from the CONSORT guidelines example, I believe that there should be a guideline that will set the minimum requişrements for reporting in development economics.
• Whether the randomization was done in public or private is an important factor to be stated in the published paper. In an examination of RCTs in development economics with small sample sizes, only 2 out of 18 studies stated this on the paper (Bruhn, & McKenzie, 2009).
• Another common reporting problem in the field is the fact that most of the time the randomization method is not shared in detail. For example, most of the time strata for the stratification method are not shared (Bruhn, & McKenzie, 2009).
• For the future development of the nimble evaluations portfolio, panelists suggested diversifying the type of evaluations that are nimble so better practices can be learned through an interdisciplinary approach. Additionally, Holla highlighted the importance of identifying the strength and weaknesses of the admin data for a smoother process (SIEF, 2021).
• Oftentimes the government records are not collected to be used for impact evaluation thus a lot of data cleaning is required. Cooperating with the local governments to build long-lasting relationships will help the researchers to closely engage with the data collection process. It will come in handy for a couple of reasons. Firstly, if you would like to lower the cost by using administrative data, you would like to have organized governmental data. Secondly, close relationships will increase trust and thus increase the chances of further collaboration. Lastly, it will make your project management more flexible as you would be directly communicating with the government and adapt according to changing needs, questions, policies, etc. (Gilbreath, personal communication, 2021)

Resources

Bruhn, M., & McKenzie, D. (2008). In Pursuit of Balance. Technical report, World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 4752. Retrieved from https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/6910

CONSORT. (2010). Welcome to the CONSORT Website. Retrieved December 11, 2020, from http://www.consort-statement.org/

Gilbreath, D. (2021, January 13). Personal interview [Personal interview].

Strategic Impact Evaluation Fund. (2021). SIEF Event | Learning from nimble evaluations [video file]. Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/511611407