CRT Goals and Overview

Objective:
The National Center for Education Research (NCER) in the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) of the U.S. Department of Education host this Summer Research Training Institute on Cluster-Randomized Trials to increase the national capacity of researchers to develop and conduct rigorous evaluations of the impact of education interventions. The course sessions will provide intensive training on planning, implementing, and analyzing data from a cluster-randomized trial.

The course will enable participants to:

• Describe the principles underlying randomized experiments and their advantages for making causal inferences.

• Understand the hierarchical structure of populations in education (students nested in classes nested in schools) and its implications for study design and analysis of data.

• Select appropriate measures for assessing outcomes, describing implementation fidelity, and capturing process variables.

• Acquire knowledge and strategies for designing and conducting a cluster-randomized trial.