What Can We Learn From A Doubly Randomized Preference Trial?—An Instrumental Variables Perspective

Abstract

The doubly randomized preference trial (DRPT) is a randomized experimental design with three arms: a treatment arm, a control arm, and a preference arm. The design has useful properties that have gone unnoticed in the applied and methodological literatures. This paper shows how to interpret the DRPT design using an instrumental variables (IV) framework. The IV framework reveals that the DRPT separately identifies three different treatment effect parameters: the Average Treatment Effect (ATE), the Average Treatment Effect on the Treated (ATT), and the Average Treatment Effect on the Untreated (ATU). The ATE, ATT, and ATU parameters are important for program evaluation research because in realistic settings many social programs are optional rather than mandatory and some people who are eligible for a program choose not to participate. Most of the paper is concerned with the interpretation of the research design. To make the ideas concrete, the final section provides an empirical example using data from an existing DRPT study.

Publication Date

3-1-2017

Publication Title

Journal of Policy Analysis and Management

Volume

36

Issue

2

Number of Pages

418-437

Document Type

Article

Personal Identifier

scopus

DOI Link

https://doi.org/10.1002/pam.21965

Socpus ID

84999791343 (Scopus)

Source API URL

https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/84999791343

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