Elizabeth Stuart

The purpose of this project is to develop user-friendly software and clear guidelines for using propensity score methods with complex survey data. While the randomized control trial remains the strongest design for rendering causal inferences, random assignment is often not feasible for a variety of practical reasons. One such situation occurs with national datasets, which provide a wealth of data but which typically feature no manipulation of an independent variable.

The purpose of this project is to investigate methods for testing the generalizability of the results of a multi-site study to sites that were not in the study's sample. Results of a well-designed and well-implemented cluster-randomized trial of a new curriculum, for example, may accurately reflect the average effect of the tested curriculum in the evaluated sites and even the average impact it would have in the population.