Thinking Outside the Randomized Controlled Trials Experimental Box: Strategies for Enhancing Credibility and Social Justice

Abstract

AbstractSome evaluators employ randomized controlled trials (RCTs) as the gold standard of evidence‐based practice (EBP). Critics of RCT designs argue that RCTs do not include the complexity of program participants' experiences or clinical expertise, and couple this with criticisms that it is difficult to transfer RCT findings from the laboratory to the real world of clinical practice. The evaluation questions applied to RCT designs often exclude issues related to participants' gender, race, class, and other differences, furthering the stereotyping process (Rogers & Ballantyne, 2009). I argue that weaving in a subjectivist methodology and shifting methodological perspectives and methods into RCT‐based evaluations prior to, during, or after the RCT design serves to enhance the credibility and social‐justice RCT praxis. ©Wiley Periodicals, Inc., and the American Evaluation Association.