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Designing Optimal, Data-Driven Policies from Multisite Randomized Trials

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2025

Youmi Suk*
Affiliation:
Teachers College, Columbia University
Chan Park
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
*
Correspondence should be made to Youmi Suk, Department of Human Development, Teachers College, Columbia University, 525 West 120th Street, New York, NY10027, USA. Email: ysuk@tc.columbia.edu

Abstract

Optimal treatment regimes (OTRs) have been widely employed in computer science and personalized medicine to provide data-driven, optimal recommendations to individuals. However, previous research on OTRs has primarily focused on settings that are independent and identically distributed, with little attention given to the unique characteristics of educational settings, where students are nested within schools and there are hierarchical dependencies. The goal of this study is to propose a framework for designing OTRs from multisite randomized trials, a commonly used experimental design in education and psychology to evaluate educational programs. We investigate modifications to popular OTR methods, specifically Q-learning and weighting methods, in order to improve their performance in multisite randomized trials. A total of 12 modifications, 6 for Q-learning and 6 for weighting, are proposed by utilizing different multilevel models, moderators, and augmentations. Simulation studies reveal that all Q-learning modifications improve performance in multisite randomized trials and the modifications that incorporate random treatment effects show the most promise in handling cluster-level moderators. Among weighting methods, the modification that incorporates cluster dummies into moderator variables and augmentation terms performs best across simulation conditions. The proposed modifications are demonstrated through an application to estimate an OTR of conditional cash transfer programs using a multisite randomized trial in Colombia to maximize educational attainment.

Information

Type
Application Reviews and Case Studies
Copyright
Copyright © 2023 The Author(s) under exclusive licence to The Psychometric Society

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Supplementary material: File

Suk and Park supplementary material

Appendix
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