Consider Propensity Scores to Compare Treatments

Authors

Lawrence M. Rudner
Peyton Johnette

DOI

https://doi.org/10.7275/kqk5-wa12

Abstract

The underlying question when comparing treatments is usually whether an individual would do better with treatment X than they would with treatment Y. But there are often practical and theoretical problems in giving people both treatments and comparing the data. This paper presents the use of propensity score matching as a methodology that can be used to compare the effectiveness of different treatments. The method is applied to answer two questions: (1) “Should examinees take a college admissions test near or a few years after graduation?” and (2) “Do accommodated students receive an unfair advantage?” Data from a large admission testing program is used. Accessed 18,071 times on https://pareonline.net from November 17, 2006 to December 31, 2019. For downloads from January 1, 2020 forward, please click on the PlumX Metrics link to the right.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

Recommended Citation

Rudner, Lawrence M. and Johnette, Peyton (2019) "Consider Propensity Scores to Compare Treatments," Practical Assessment, Research, and Evaluation: Vol. 11, Article 9.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7275/kqk5-wa12
Available at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/pare/vol11/iss1/9