… and ditch its poorer but apparently much cuter cousin, RCT. At least that is what I see as the takeaway from this article about external validity problems with RCT – which by the way is similar to the “how do you scale it up” and “how can we apply what you have found in this particular case to other cases” criticism of ethnography. Plus, with ethnography, you get a much, much richer understanding of people’s lives, the choices they make, how they understand those choices – with all those situated in a larger historical and political economic context.
The article is here. Don’t forget to also read the comments.
I wrote about RCT here a couple of years ago. I also wrote a bit about Dean Karlan’s More Than Good Intentions: How a New Economics Is Helping to Solve Global Poverty here.
