One of the most inspiring speakers from Day 1 of TED 2010 Long Beach was Esther Duflo. Esther is a development economist who has applied randomised control trials (RCTs) to social policy related to poverty. She has examined a range of strategies to increase rates of child immunisation, use of mosquito nets and number of years of education using RCTs in different villages and found some surprising results. For example with child immunisation they found that the most cost effective way of immunising children was to make it easy for families to access the service (i.e. travel to the village) and provide 1kg of lentils as an incentive for families to immunise children. Providing mosquito nets for free does not decrease their use or make it less likely that recipients will pay for nets in the future. The most effective investment to increase years of schooling (in areas where worms are an issue) is a de-worming program, followed by programs to inform parents about the benefits of education.
The use of RCTs and applying the same level of rigour as used in medical research seems so obvious and logical when the results are presented. This research provides an evidence base to direct the most effective strategies and investment in addressing social issues. RCTs to examine social policy could be applied to research related to people with disabilities or indigenous people. However one of the challenges is to apply research methods in a way that is respectful and empowering for marginalised people. Randomising intervention is at odds with a community building approach that supports people with disabilities or indigenous people to develop their own solutions. Indigenous communities are diverse in their community strengths and specific social issues. In some circumstances baseline measures may need to be used so that communities provide their own control data. In the disability sector there is such a large amount of unmet need that finding a control group would be less problematic.
Having a designated person to open and close the office means there is a point person.
Posted by: security | November 22, 2011 at 12:03 AM