Randomized experiments are a strong design for establishing impact evidence because the random assignment mechanism theoretically allows confidence in attributing group differences to the intervention. Growth of randomized experiments within educational studies has been widely documented. However, randomized experiments within education have…

Single-case experimental designs (SCEDs) have a long history in clinical and educational disciplines. One underdeveloped area in advancing SCED design and analysis is understanding the process of how internal validity threats and operational concerns are avoided or mitigated. Two strategies to ameliorate such issues in SCED involve replication and…

Cluster randomized trials (CRTs) are commonly used to evaluate the causal effects of educational interventions, where the entire clusters (e.g., schools) are randomly assigned to treatment or control conditions. This study introduces statistical methods for designing and analyzing two-level (e.g., students nested within schools) and three-level…

RobotReviewer is a tool for automatically assessing the risk of bias in randomized controlled trials, but there is limited evidence of its reliability. We evaluated the agreement between RobotReviewer and humans regarding the risk of bias assessment based on 1955 randomized controlled trials. The risk of bias in these trials was assessed via two…

The COVID-19 pandemic touched off an unprecedented search for vaccines and treatments. Without question, the development of vaccines to prevent COVID-19 was an enormous scientific accomplishment. Further, the RECOVERY and Solidarity trials identified effective treatments for COVID-19. But all was not success. The urgent need for COVID-19…

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the race to find an effective vaccine or treatment saw an 'extraordinary number' of clinical trials being conducted. While there were some key success stories, not all trials produced results that informed patient care. There was a significant amount of waste in clinical research during the pandemic which is said to…

In the complex world of educational policy, causal inferences will be debated. As we review non-experimental designs in educational policy, we focus on how to clarify and focus the terms of debate. We begin by presenting the potential outcomes/counterfactual framework and then describe approximations to the counterfactual generated from the…