Dissertation Grant: Social Science's Use of Controlled Field Experiments

Northwestern University, Evanston IL

Investigators

Abstract

The project will examine how the adoption of randomized controlled field experiments became the "gold standard" of evidence and policy. It will address how they came to shift power relations among the donors, development economists, local ministries, and intended beneficiaries-turned-research participants. This project will study how field experiments came to be used to assess international economic development interventions. The project?s findings will help policy-makers to understand the kinds of technologies of evaluation that they fund and how these measure the outcomes of international economic development policy. This project will extend existing scholarship on the practices and politics of scientific knowledge by studying the middle ground between the laboratory and field sciences where randomized controlled field experiments impact evaluation to produce evidence for "what works" in foreign aid. Through archival, interview-based and ethnographic research, this project traces the history of the controlled field experiments to analyze when and why social scientists and development practitioners use them, how they construct viable experimental spaces and subjects, and the implications for foreign aid and its intended beneficiaries. This research will consider how foreign technical assistance acts on scientific knowledge; and the political and logistical struggle of creating credibility for their continued use. The project will contribute to increased public scientific literacy and engagement with social science, understanding between academia and policy makers, and improved training of graduate students.