Dissertation Grant: Social Science's Use of Controlled Field Experiments

该项目将研究采用随机对照实地实验如何成为证据和政策的“黄金标准”。它将讨论它们是如何改变捐助者、发展经济学家、地方部委和原定受益者转变为研究参与者之间的权力关系的。该项目将研究如何利用实地试验来评估国际经济发展干预措施。这个项目吗?研究结果将有助于决策者了解他们资助的各种评估技术，以及这些技术如何衡量国际经济发展政策的成果。该项目将通过研究实验室和实地科学之间的中间地带，扩展现有的关于科学知识实践和政治的学术研究，其中随机对照的实地实验影响评估，为对外援助中的“什么有效”提供证据。通过档案、访谈和民族志研究，该项目追溯了受控现场实验的历史，以分析社会科学家和发展实践者何时以及为何使用它们，它们如何构建可行的实验空间和主题，以及对外国援助及其预期受益者的影响。这项研究将考虑外国技术援助如何作用于科学知识；以及在政治和后勤方面的斗争，为它们的继续使用创造信誉。该项目将有助于提高公众的科学素养和对社会科学的参与，促进学术界和决策者之间的理解，并改善研究生的培训。

The project will examine how the adoption of randomized controlled field experiments became the "gold standard" of evidence and policy. It will address how they came to shift power relations among the donors, development economists, local ministries, and intended beneficiaries-turned-research participants. This project will study how field experiments came to be used to assess international economic development interventions. The project?s findings will help policy-makers to understand the kinds of technologies of evaluation that they fund and how these measure the outcomes of international economic development policy. This project will extend existing scholarship on the practices and politics of scientific knowledge by studying the middle ground between the laboratory and field sciences where randomized controlled field experiments impact evaluation to produce evidence for "what works" in foreign aid. Through archival, interview-based and ethnographic research, this project traces the history of the controlled field experiments to analyze when and why social scientists and development practitioners use them, how they construct viable experimental spaces and subjects, and the implications for foreign aid and its intended beneficiaries. This research will consider how foreign technical assistance acts on scientific knowledge; and the political and logistical struggle of creating credibility for their continued use. The project will contribute to increased public scientific literacy and engagement with social science, understanding between academia and policy makers, and improved training of graduate students.