The role of open science practices in scaling evidence-based prevention programs

Robert Ammerman, Anne Duggan, John List, Lauren Supplee and Dana Suskind

Natural Field Experiments from The Field Experiments Website

Abstract: The goal of creating evidence-based programs is to scale them at sufficient breadth to support population-level improvements in critical outcomes. However, this promise is challenging to fulfill. One of the biggest issues for the field is the reduction in effect sizes seen when a program is taken to scale. This paper discusses an economic perspective that identifies the underlying incentives in the research process that lead to scale up problems and to deliver potential solutions to strengthen outcomes at scale. The principles of open science are well aligned with this goal. One prevention program that has begun to scale across the United States is early childhood home visiting. While there is a substantial impact research on home visiting, overall average effect size is .10 and a recent national randomized trial found attenuated effect sizes in programs implemented under real-world conditions. The paper concludes with a case study of the relevance of the economic model and open science in developing and scaling evidence-based home visiting. The case study considers how the traditional approach for testing interventions has influenced home visiting's evolution to date and how open science practices could have supported efforts to maintain impacts while scaling home visiting. It concludes by considering how open science can accelerate the refinement and scaling of home visiting interventions going forward, through accelerated translation of research into policy and practice.

Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://s3.amazonaws.com/fieldexperiments-papers2/papers/00741.pdf

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:feb:natura:00741

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Natural Field Experiments from The Field Experiments Website
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Francesca Pagnotta ().