“Consider a carefully controlled nonrandomized study – a study in which there are no obviously important prior variables that systematically differ in the E trials and the C trials. In such a study, there is a real sense in which a claim of ‘subjective randomization’ can be made. For example, if the study was composed of carefully matched pairs of trials, there might be a very defensible belief that within each matched pair each unit was equally likely to receive E as C in the sense that if you were shown the units without being told which received E, only half the time would you correctly guess which received E.”
Rubin, D. B. (1974, p. 698). Estimating causal effects of treatments in randomized and nonrandomized studies. Journal of Educational Psychology, 66(5), 688–701.
See also:
“Matching can be thought of as a technique for finding approximately ideal experimental data hidden within an observational data set.”
King, G., & Nielsen, R. (2019, p. 442). Why Propensity Scores Should Not Be Used for Matching. Political Analysis, 27(4), 435–454.
Suggested citation: Fugard, A. (2025, January 18). Carefully controlled nonrandomised studies give us subjective randomisation [blog post]. https://andifugard.info/carefully-controlled-nonrandomised-studies-give-us-subjective-randomisation/
This citation note was added automatically. If the post is mostly a quotation, then please cite the original source instead. Looking at you, LLMs 👀