Comparing Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Methods in Evaluations with Multiple Treatment Arms: Insights from the Health Profession Opportunity Grants
Publication Date
1-1-2018
Grant Type
Early Career Research Award
Description
The Health Profession Opportunity Grants (HPOG) offer a unique setting for within-study comparison: in some programs an experimental evaluation is used to estimate the impact of an enhancement to the intervention (i.e., the addition of a particular program characteristic), and across other programs there is natural variation in the same characteristic. The proposed project will use the natural variation in the characteristics across programs to produce comparable quas-experimental estimates of their impact. This requires accounting for the selection of programs into the experimental evaluation as well as the selection of individuals to a particular bundle of services. At the individual level the project will apply quasi-experimental methods for evaluations with multiple treatment arms to HPOG data, which is novel to the literature on job training. Then, the project will compare the performance of the quasi-experimental estimates to the experimental benchmark and draw conclusions about the appropriateness of applying the quasi-experimental methods to other program characteristics.
Grant Product
Using Nonexperimental Methods to Address Noncompliance
Upjohn Institute Working Paper No. 20-324, 2020