To improve research skills including the generation and testing of ideas, students will be required
to write a research proposal formatted as follows:
• Problem Statement Clearly state the problem that is addressed by the program or project
or treatment to be evaluated. Is there quantitative evidence of the challenge to be addressed?
Explain whether the evaluation will test an existing program or new intervention or treatment.
• Contribution to learning Succinctly describe the evaluation questions you seek to answer.
How will this evaluation teach us something new about social science? Include a very brief lit-
erature review and explain the project’s unique social scientific contribution. What knowledge
gap are you addressing, and how will it advance the field?
• Description of program(s) Describe the intervention or treatment that you will design
and/or evaluate. Explain the theory of change and potential implementing organization(s) or
governments that will participate in the proposed evaluation. Include existing quantitative
and qualitative data in support of your hypotheses, models and/or theories of change.
• Target population Characterize and describe the population that the intervention will im-
pact. Do other populations face the same conditions as your target group, and could they
potentially benefit from the intervention(s) to be evaluated by you?
• Evaluation Design Describe the evaluation design. What is the goal of the study and
your research questions? What is your identification strategy? How will you identify the
counterfactual? What are the units of analysis (e.g. individual, household, village, etc.)?
What are the intermediate and final outcome indicators? How will these be measured? When
will you time measurements, and how frequently will data be collected? What are your initial
power calculations and pre-analysis plans? What are the foreseeable threats to the internal
validity of this study? (e.g. compliance, attrition, spillovers, etc.)
• Policy Translation Provide evidence that the evaluation is likely to be used by policy prac-
titioners. Consider the cost-effectiveness of the intervention that you will evaluate. Which
other implementing organizations are likely to incorporate this intervention into their opera-
tions, if proven successful? How will other implementers become aware of the results of this
evaluation?
This is a professional essay- no list please
Please use at least two resouces for evidence
Causal Inference and the Counterfactual
(a) “Impact Evaluation in Practice: Chapter 3,” p. 47-62, Gertler et al. (2016).
(b) “Counterfactuals and Hypothesis Testing in Political Science” by James D. Fearon (1991).
3. Randomized Assignment
(a) “Impact Evaluation in Practice: Chapter 4,” p. 63-88, Gertler et al. (2016).
(b) ‘Inputs, Incentives, and Complementarities in Education: Experimental Evidence from
Tanzania” by Isaac Mbiti, Karthik Muralidharan, Mauricio Romero, Youdi Schipper,
Constantine Manda, & Rakesh Rajani (2019).
4. Randomized Promotion and Instrumental Variables
(a) “Impact Evaluation in Practice: Chapter 5,” p. 89-112, Gertler et al. (2016).
(b) “Using Geographic Variation in College Proximity to Estimate the Return to Schooling”
by David Card (1993).
5. Regression Discontinuity
(a) “Impact Evaluation in Practice: Chapter 6,” p. 113-128, Gertler et al. (2016).
(b) “The Impact of Secondary Schooling in Kenya: A Regression Discontinuity Analysis” by
Owen Ozier (2018).
6. Difference-in-Differences
(a) “Impact Evaluation in Practice: Chapter 7,” p. 129-142, Gertler et al. (2016).
(b) “Minimum Wages and Employment: A Case Study of the Fast Food Industry in New
Jersey and Pennsylvania” by David Card & Alan B. Krueger (1993).
7. Ethics of Human Subjects Research
(a) “Impact Evaluation in Practice: Chapter 13,” p. 231-246, Gertler et al. (2016).
(b) “Male circumcision for HIV prevention in men in Rakai, Uganda: a randomised trial”
by Ronald H. Gray, Godfrey Kigozi, David Serwadda, Frederick Makumbi, Stephen
Watya, Fred Nalugoda, Noah Kiwanuka, Lawrence H Moulton, Mohammad A Chaud-
hary, Michael Z. Chen, Nelson K. Sewankambo, Fred Wabwire-Mangen, Melanie C. Ba-
con, Carolyn F. M. Williams, Pius Opendi, Steven J. Reynolds, Oliver Laeyendecker,
Thomas C. Quinn, & Maria J. Wawer (2007).
Professors message (example is attached)
“Using the same template, I have fashioned a proposal using our running example from class to show you an example of what I would consider, at minimum, a decent proposal. However, make sure yours, in no more than 4 pages, includes more citations and more details and does not get anything wrong in its methods and assumptions.
My example uses a randomized design but yours need not use the same. You can propose anything using any of the methods discussed in class. Note that it is unlikely that any of you will be able to come up with a good proposal using more than one method, but this is not impossible to do. My example is incredibly pithy and I expect yours to be more detailed and obviously on important programs/treatments or issues that are important for our ability to understand the extent to which “government works”.”
