Considerations for Evidence Frameworks in Education Research

In this chapter, we describe and compare the standards for evidence used by three entities that review studies of education interventions: Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development, Social Programs that Work, and the What Works Clearinghouse. Based on direct comparisons of the evidence frameworks, we identify key differences in the level at which effectiveness ratings are granted (i.e., intervention vs. outcome domain), as well as in how each entity prioritizes intervention documentation, researcher independence, and sustained versus immediate effects. Because such differences in priorities may result in contradictory intervention ratings between entities, we offer a number of recommendations for a common set of standards that would harmonize effectiveness ratings across the three entities while preserving differences that allow for variation in user priorities. These include disentangling study rigor from intervention effectiveness, ceasing vote counting procedures, adding replication criteria, adding fidelity criteria, assessing baseline equivalence for randomized studies, making quasi-experiments eligible for review, adding criteria for researcher independence, and providing effectiveness ratings at the level of the outcome domain rather than the intervention.