The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded a $131,858 Project Grant to The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York, Sponsored Projects Administration Division (Columbia University), under the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences program (CFDA 47.075). The grant funds research to develop statistical approaches that improve the external validity of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in the social sciences.
Specifically, the research will make two key methodological contributions: 1) A new framework to design RCTs for enhanced external validity by developing an algorithm to select optimal experimental sites, and 2) A statistical tool to quantify the robustness of RCTs to external validity bias. These complementary methods provide a unified pipeline to increase the generalizability of causal effects discovered through RCTs in social science domains. This research aims to advance evidence-based decision-making by addressing challenges around scaling up social science interventions from study populations to real-world settings.
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