Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Designs

Catalog description

This course will introduce various methods to assess/evaluate the effectiveness of educational or social interventions. Assessing the causal effects of educational and social policies and practices is one important aim of educational and social science research. Student will learn theories of causal inference and a toolkit of quantitative methods to enable them to make valid causal inferences, particularly in the absence of a true randomized experiment, as well as methodological assumptions and limitations for each method. Students will learn 1) randomized experimental designs, 2) instrumental variables; 3) the use of natural and quasi-experiments; 4) longitudinal methods, including interrupted time-series designs and difference-in-differences methods; 5) regression discontinuity; 6) matching estimators, including propensity score methods; and 7) fixed effects estimators.