by How to achieve ‘external validity’ There is a lot of discussion in the literature on beginning with experiments and then going on to check “external validity”. But to imagine that there is a scientific way to achieve external validity is, for the most part, a delusion … RCTs do not in themselves tell us anything about the traits of populations in other places and at other times. Hence, no matter how large the population from which we draw our random samples is, because it is impossible to draw samples from tomorrow’s population and all policies we craft today are for use tomorrow, there is no “scientific” way to go from RCTs to policy. En route from evidence and experience to policy, we have to rely on intuition, common sense and judgement. It is
Topics:
Lars Pålsson Syll considers the following as important: Statistics & Econometrics
This could be interesting, too:
Lars Pålsson Syll writes The history of econometrics
Lars Pålsson Syll writes What statistics teachers get wrong!
Lars Pålsson Syll writes Statistical uncertainty
Lars Pålsson Syll writes The dangers of using pernicious fictions in statistics
How to achieve ‘external validity’
There is a lot of discussion in the literature on beginning with experiments and then going on to check “external validity”. But to imagine that there is a scientific way to achieve external validity is, for the most part, a delusion … RCTs do not in themselves tell us anything about the traits of populations in other places and at other times. Hence, no matter how large the population from which we draw our random samples is, because it is impossible to draw samples from tomorrow’s population and all policies we craft today are for use tomorrow, there is no “scientific” way to go from RCTs to policy. En route from evidence and experience to policy, we have to rely on intuition, common sense and judgement. It is evidence coupled with intuition and judgement that gives us knowledge. To deny any role to intuition is to fall into total nihilism.