IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/anname/v589y2003i1p6-19.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Misleading Evidence and Evidence-Led Policy: Making Social Science more Experimental

Author

Listed:
  • Lawrence W. Sherman

Abstract

Increasing demands by government for “evidence-led†policy raise the risk that research evidence will mis lead government rather than leading to an unbiased conclusion. The need for unbiased research conclusions has never been greater, yet few consumers of research understand the statistical biases with which science must always struggle. This article introduces the volume's discussion of those issues with an explanation of the major threats of bias in social science research and a map of the differing scientific opinions on how to deal with those threats. The thesis of the volume is that many of these threats could be reduced by making social science more experimental. The fact that even experimental evidence contains threats of bias does not alter that claim but merely suggests another: that educated consumers of social science may be the best defense against misleading evidence of all kinds.

Suggested Citation

  • Lawrence W. Sherman, 2003. "Misleading Evidence and Evidence-Led Policy: Making Social Science more Experimental," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 589(1), pages 6-19, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:anname:v:589:y:2003:i:1:p:6-19
    DOI: 10.1177/0002716203256266
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0002716203256266
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0002716203256266?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gerber, Alan S. & Green, Donald P., 2000. "The Effects of Canvassing, Telephone Calls, and Direct Mail on Voter Turnout: A Field Experiment," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 94(3), pages 653-663, September.
    2. David P. Farrington, 2003. "British Randomized Experiments on Crime and Justice," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 589(1), pages 150-167, September.
    3. Herbert Turner & Robert Boruch & Anthony Petrosino & Julia Lavenberg & Dorothy de Moya & Hannah Rothstein, 2003. "Populating an International Web-Based Randomized Trials Register in the Social, Behavioral, Criminological, and Education Sciences," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 589(1), pages 203-223, September.
    4. Alan Gerber & Donald Green, 2000. "The effects of canvassing, direct mail, and telephone contact on voter turnout: A field experiment," Natural Field Experiments 00248, The Field Experiments Website.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lawrence W. Sherman, 2003. "Experimental Evidence and Governmental Administration," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 589(1), pages 226-233, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Lisa M. George & Joel Waldfogel, 2006. "The New York Times and the Market for Local Newspapers," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(1), pages 435-447, March.
    2. León, Gianmarco, 2017. "Turnout, political preferences and information: Experimental evidence from Peru," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 56-71.
    3. Alan Gerber & Mitchell Hoffman & John Morgan & Collin Raymond, 2020. "One in a Million: Field Experiments on Perceived Closeness of the Election and Voter Turnout," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 12(3), pages 287-325, July.
    4. Alberto Chong & Gianmarco León‐Ciliotta & Vivian Roza & Martín Valdivia & Gabriela Vega, 2019. "Urbanization Patterns, Information Diffusion, and Female Voting in Rural Paraguay," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 63(2), pages 323-341, April.
    5. Yusaku Horichi & Jun Saito, 2009. "Rain, Elections and Money: The Impact of Voter Turnout on Distributive Policy Outcomes in Japan," Asia Pacific Economic Papers 379, Australia-Japan Research Centre, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.
    6. Julia Cage & Edgard Dewitte, 2021. "It Takes Money to Make MPs: Evidence from 150 Years of British Campaign Spending," SciencePo Working papers hal-03384143, HAL.
    7. Laurent Bouton & Julia Cagé & Edgard Dewitte & Vincent Pons, 2021. "Small Campaign Donors," Working Papers hal-03878175, HAL.
    8. Musharraf Rasool Cyan & Antonios M. Koumpias & Jorge Martinez-Vazquez, 2016. "The Effects of Media Campaigns on Individual Attitudes towards Tax Compliance; Quasi-experimental Evidence from Survey Data in Pakistan," International Center for Public Policy Working Paper Series, at AYSPS, GSU paper1609, International Center for Public Policy, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University.
    9. Donald P. Green & Alan S. Gerber, 2003. "The Underprovision of Experiments in Political Science," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 589(1), pages 94-112, September.
    10. Vincenzo Galasso & Tommaso Nannicini, 2013. "Men Vote in Mars, Women Vote in Venus: A Survey Experiment in the Field," CESifo Working Paper Series 4328, CESifo.
    11. Janelle S. Wong, 2005. "Mobilizing Asian American Voters: A Field Experiment," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 601(1), pages 102-114, September.
    12. Kobayashi, Yoshiharu & Heinrich, Tobias & Bryant, Kristin A., 2021. "Public support for development aid during the COVID-19 pandemic," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).
    13. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/45gqdl5l4387f9b9l12gr2g3kt is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Salomo Hirvonen & Jerome Schafer & Janne Tukiainen, 2022. "Policy Feedback and Civic Engagement: Evidence from the Finnish Basic Income Experiment," Discussion Papers 155, Aboa Centre for Economics.
    15. Valentina A. Bali & Lindon J. Robison & Richard Winder, 2020. "What Motivates People to Vote? The Role of Selfishness, Duty, and Social Motives When Voting," SAGE Open, , vol. 10(4), pages 21582440209, October.
    16. Ilona Babenko & Viktar Fedaseyeu & Song Zhang, 2017. "Do CEOs affect employees' political choices?," BAFFI CAREFIN Working Papers 1750, BAFFI CAREFIN, Centre for Applied Research on International Markets Banking Finance and Regulation, Universita' Bocconi, Milano, Italy.
    17. Leonardo Bursztyn & Davide Cantoni & Patricia Funk & Felix Schönenberger & Noam Yuchtman, 2024. "Identifying the Effect of Election Closeness on Voter Turnout: Evidence from Swiss Referenda," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 22(2), pages 876-914.
    18. Alan Gerber, 2004. "Does campaign spending work?," Natural Field Experiments 00246, The Field Experiments Website.
    19. Valentino Larcinese, 2007. "Does political knowledge increase turnout? Evidence from the 1997 British general election," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 131(3), pages 387-411, June.
    20. Bekkouche, Yasmine & Cagé, Julia & Dewitte, Edgard, 2022. "The heterogeneous price of a vote: Evidence from multiparty systems, 1993–2017," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 206(C).
    21. Helios Herrera & Massimo Morelli & Salvatore Nunnari, 2016. "Turnout Across Democracies," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 60(3), pages 607-624, July.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:anname:v:589:y:2003:i:1:p:6-19. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.