ERIC Number: EJ1482114
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2025-Oct
Pages: 15
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0193-841X
EISSN: EISSN-1552-3926
Available Date: 0000-00-00
Dubious Evidence, Valuable Information
Evaluation Review, v49 n5 p799-813 2025
I explore how "low-quality evidence" from program performance might still be useful in decision-making. Conceptually, a local government named "Here" is motivated to consider a program from "Elsewhere" that seems to show year-over-year exemplary performance. Here must manage five sources of uncertainty about whether and how to extrapolate from Elsewhere: chance in assessing Elsewhere's performance; illusion due to confounding variables; estimating the several powers of the program's components; substitutions in the design process made by Elsewhere and contemplated by Here; and estimating whether in the final analysis Here can meet its own breakeven criterion for going ahead. Here can begin with Elsewhere's experience, but it still must do much thinking and information-collecting on its own.
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: 1Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA