1. takeyourplace.ac.uk
Using data to address ethical challenges in RCTs: activity tracking and process focus
Sonia Ilie & Silvia Lucato-Hadeler

2. Evidence building in education: complex and messy “What works”: critiqued but sought after

3. Randomised Controlled Trials
Emerged as response to unreliable, un-replicable, small-scale evidence that doesn’t show causality

4. RCT Challenges
On-the-ground reality Practicality of implementation Challenges of data collection External validity Ethics

5. Ethical concerns
Allocation - denying participants a proven effective programme

6. Ethical concerns
Exploitation – participants not receiving a fair share of the benefits of research (e.g. timing not allowing benefits)

7. Ethical concerns
Risk – exposing participants to an untested, potentially detrimental programme

8. Approach to evaluation Outcome and Process Quasi-experimental
takeyourplace.ac.uk
Approach to activity Intensive and progressive In-school staff Community engagement Many types of activity
Approach to evaluation
Outcome and Process
Quasi-experimental
Large scale data collection
RCTs of light-touch information-provision behavioural nudging interventions

9. Mixed-methods approaches to address ethical concerns
Process evaluation
Obser-vation
Feed-back
Inter-views

10. Mixed-methods approaches to addressing ethical concerns in RCTs
Focus on the process of change for the whole programme
Tracking RCT participants’ participation in other school-based activities
To understand where the RCT-provided information fits in shaping students’ knowledge, aspirations, and behaviour

11. Remaining concerns
External validity – contextualisation Participant self-selection Detecting effects of light-touch programmes in an otherwise busy activity space Trade-off between comprehensiveness and cost (of both programmes and evaluation) Data collection burdens

12. But positive outlook
Positive perspectives from on-the-ground staff to evaluation, data collection, and randomised controlled trials when set in the context of achieving the best possible WP programming for young people