Misalignment between PA experimental methods and outcomes

How many findings in experimental public administration rely on random assignment, the gold standard for reducing bias in studies? CORD Fellow Spiro Maroulis, CORD Associate Director Ulrich Jensen, and Youngjae Won of ASU School of Public Affairs recently set out to answer this question with CORD colleagues Jesper Asring Hansen and Christian Bøtcher Jacobsen (Aarhus University, Kong Frederiks Center for Offentlig Ledelse) and Ole Helby Petersen (Roskilde University).

Their new article, published in the Journal of Behavioral Public Administration, analyzes the primary findings from every experimental study published in JPART from 1991 to 2020. By investigating both the original studies and how their findings were interpreted in subsequent citations, the paper finds that many conclusions from experimental studies are not rooted in randomization—an observation that raises important questions about knowledge development in the field.

Dig in to the methods section here (https://journal-bpa.org/index.php/jbpa/article/view/364/167).