Testing for heterogeneous treatment effects in experimental data: false discovery risks and correction procedures.

We review the statistical models applied to test for heterogeneous treatment effects in the recent empirical literature, with a particular focus on data from randomised field experiments. We show that testing for heterogeneous treatment effects is highly common, and likely to result in a large numbe...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Publicado en:Journal of Development Effectiveness Vol. 6; no. 1; pp. 44 - 58
Autores principales: Fink, Günther, McConnell, Margaret, Vollmer, Sebastian
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Taylor & Francis Ltd Mar2014
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Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
Descripción
Sumario:We review the statistical models applied to test for heterogeneous treatment effects in the recent empirical literature, with a particular focus on data from randomised field experiments. We show that testing for heterogeneous treatment effects is highly common, and likely to result in a large number of false discoveries when conventional decision rules are applied. We demonstrate that applying correction procedures developed in the statistics literature can fully address this issue, and discuss the implications of multiple testing adjustments for power calculations and experimental design.