Hi, application to entrepreneurship education may be difficult because it would be difficult to 'control' the variables influencing entrepreneurship, as well as the learning from varied sources during the education period. For creativity related studies, it may be possible to set controls.

Hi, application to entrepreneurship education may be difficult because it would be difficult to 'control' the variables influencing entrepreneurship, as well as the learning from varied sources during the education period. For creativity related studies, it may be possible to set controls.

Particularly complex, not only in the application as in the qualitative measurement of results.

Someone even spoke of "paradoxical principle", if referred to any application of RCTs controls to the "natural" actions, since the inherent variable parts of natural processes - that are essential and characterizing - should be "controlled" and even, in some cases, inhibited or removed.

However, two predictions, of-thumb:

#1. It is very likely that RCTs will be applied gradually more and more also in the social sciences, given that quantitative measurements are spreading to areas previously unexplored by systematic calculation;

#2. A point of contact could be applied to anthropometric measurements in anthropomorphic robotics, as well as applications to natural activities assisted by computational machines, such as language-based computerized processes.

g

Dear Marika

RCTs are often used to test the efficacy or effectiveness of various types of medical intervention within a patient population. RCTs may also provide an opportunity to gather useful information about adverse effects, such as drug reactions.

The term randomized controlled clinical trials is a methodologically sound alternate expansion for "RCT" in RCTs that concern clinical research, however, RCTs are also employed in other research areas, including many of the social sciences.

In the social sciences this plays into the hands of policy makers who want to claim a specific intervention has a definable outcome. It leads also to the many silly social psychology, laboratory based ‘experiments’ that are then inappropriately extrapolated to the ‘real world’.

I am sending an article that may help you

The Role of Randomized Field Trials in Social Science Research

A Perspective From Evaluations of Reforms of Social Welfare Programs

ROBERT A. MOFFITT

Johns Hopkins University

How do you identify 'random'? There will always be some bias in social sciences for instance when sampling procedures are not imposed to people, e.g. people willing or refusing to be involved may come from a biased population with biased characteristics.

Ma'am,the randomised control trials should work effectively according to me as long as they are high on mundane realism despite controlled environments.

Why are there differences in composition of human study and target populations?

Compositions of human study populations should be representative for compositions of whole human target populations. Critical text books will argue this is not always the case. For instance, how reliable are polls when no information is available about characteristics of individuals sampled? Perhaps people that participate to polls differ from those that are not willing to participate thus providing biased pictures in opinion. If the majority of a sample of 1000 people in a poll states they keep supporting a system of BAC exams in France, is this because the vast majority of participants succeeded with BAC exams? If the same poll would be addressed to students 1 to 3 years before BAC exams, would the majority be against BAC exams? Perhaps people change opinion concerning usefulness of BAC exams when they know more about performance of education systems without BAC exams.

Not all characteristics of individuals composing study populations are consistently sampled. Characteristics that require considerable financial or human investment in sampling include techniques involving molecular markers, physiological markers or behavioural aspects, like personality profiles. These characteristics are most often sampled for short periods of time in long-term field studies or sampled in a limited number of biased study populations. Perhaps population characteristics and their environments are better controlled in small-scale laboratory studies. Highly controlled environments that are more efficiently monitored by scientists are evidently not always representative for what is happening in natura.

Some possible examples of biology-based mechanisms that may influence perception and therefore data sampling

Psychologists sometimes present paint spots to patients to determine how they respond. Different patients tell different stories when exposed to the same paint spot. Perhaps this might also be the case when different data samplers are confronted with the same photo, the same question, or the same publication. Perhaps judgement of photos, pictures, art objects or any natural phenomenon observed expresses spatiotemporal variation because of biology-based underlying mechanisms, like season or light-exposure related individual perception characteristics (e.g. phototherapy assumes that human mental state is influenced by light conditions). Can we fully exclude that perception or attraction states are influenced by hormone or fertility states of data samplers? Do scientific sampling procedures in human study populations take biological rules of mental perception and interpretation into account?

My personal experience is randomized controlled trials do not work well. And no way are they superior. Sometimes they might work, but thats just luck.