To Randomize Or Not to Randomize? That is the Question

Women Affirming Motherhood (WAM) recently received substantial support from the Empire Foundation for WAM’s work in assisting pregnant young women. As part of the grant, Empire required WAM to elicit bids for an independent evaluation of WAM’s performance. In what follows, the focus is on evaluating WAM’s effects. In particular, the concern is whether and how a randomized controlled trial (RCT) might be deployed so as to produce a fair estimate WAM’s effects. The approach to addressing the concern is interrogatory, as the title suggests. The topic’s handling here is more Socratic than it is Shakespearian, however.