The purpose of this study is to explore the views of autistic adults on randomised controlled trials, specifically on processes such as randomisation and blinding, to understand the barriers and facilitators for recruiting autistic people to randomised controlled trials involving medications. We conducted one-to-one interviews with 49 autistic…

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…

Traditionally, cluster randomized controlled trials are analyzed with the average intervention effect of interest. However, in populations that contain higher degrees of heterogeneity or variation may differ across different values of a covariate, which may not be optimal. Within education and social science contexts, exploring the variation in…

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…

By design, randomized experiments (XPs) rule out bias from confounded selection of participants into conditions. Quasi-experiments (QEs) are often considered second-best because they do not share this benefit. However, when results from XPs are used to generalize causal impacts, the benefit from unconfounded selection into conditions may be offset…

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…