Public Lecture: Drawing Policy Lessons from RCTs: When to Generalise and When Not To? (Dr Rachel Glennerster)

The talk drew from Dr. Glennerster’s recent book Running Randomized Evaluations – A Practical Guide, and the policy work of J-PAL to discuss the use of RCT-generated evidence as part of the policy-making process. In particular, the talk addressed common issues of generalisability and discuss how we can use evidence from RCTs, descriptive data, and theory to decide whether and when to translate lessons from one context to another. The workshop was particularly targeted at practitioners in the broad field of international development, but was also useful to researchers hoping to improve the policy relevance of their work. During the last half of the workshop, the IGC opened the floor for questions and comments from the audience.