Skip to main content
Skip to main content

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

This is the cover image for the 'Effects of Food Assistance and Nutrition Programs on Nutrition and Health: Volume 1, Research Design' report.

Effects of Food Assistance and Nutrition Programs on Nutrition and Health: Volume 1, Research Design

  • by William Hamilton and Peter H. Rossi
  • 2/1/2002
  • FANRR-19-1

Overview

This is the first of four reports in the "Nutrition and Health Outcome Study," which assesses the effects of USDA's food assistance and nutrition programs on nutrition and health outcomes. This report reviews the research designs available to evaluators for assessing the effect of USDA's food assistance and nutrition programs. The random assignment experiment is the "gold standard" design for such an evaluation. Where random assignment is impossible, quasi-experimental designs are used to infer what would have happened to program participants if the program had not existed. Eight types of quasi-experimental design are identified as having been used in evaluations of food assistance and nutrition programs, although none can guarantee unbiased estimates of program impacts.

Download