Research Design and Methods for Program and Policy Evaluation

3 credits · Graduate

This course, designed to graduate students with some prior training to quantitative research methods, will introduce students to a toolkit of methods to enable them to address issues related to "what works" in program and policy evaluation. In addition, the course intends to help students understand the assumptions implicit in each of these approaches. Topics include (1) validity, threats to validity, and causal inference framework: (2) randomized experiments and quasi-experiment designs (regression discontinuity and propensity score matching); (3) multilevel modeling technique used in multi-site evaluation and longitudinal intervention studies; (4) mixed-methods approach; (5) meta-analysis for synthesizing evaluation/empirical studies; and (6) power and sample size in designing new evaluation studies.