Lortie-Forgues, Hugues orcid.org/0000-0002-4060-8980 and Inglis, Matthew (2019) Rigorous Large-Scale Educational RCTs are Often Uninformative:Should We Be Concerned? Educational Researcher. pp. 158-166. ISSN 0013-189X
Abstract
There are a growing number of large-scale educational Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs). Considering their expense, it is important to reflect on the effectiveness of this approach. We assessed the magnitude and precision of effects found in those large-scale RCTs commissioned by the EEF (UK) and the NCEE (US) which evaluated interventions aimed at improving academic achievement in K-12 (141 RCTs; 1,222,024 students). The mean effect size was 0.06 standard deviations (SDs). These sat within relatively large confidence intervals (mean width 0.30 SDs) which meant that the results were often uninformative (the median Bayes factor was 0.56). We argue that our field needs, as a priority, to understand why educational RCTs often find small and uninformative effects.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self-archiving policy. Further copying may not be permitted; contact the publisher for details. |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of York |
Academic Units: | The University of York > Faculty of Social Sciences (York) > Education (York) |
Depositing User: | Pure (York) |
Date Deposited: | 30 Jan 2019 11:30 |
Last Modified: | 16 Oct 2024 15:25 |
Published Version: | https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X19832850 |
Status: | Published |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.3102/0013189X19832850 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:141754 |
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