Presenting Evidence for the Field that Invented the Randomized Clinical Trial

In this chapter John Holcomb raises difficult questions about the ethics of experimental design when investigating questions about student learning, which led him to forego the traditional approach of using a control group. This decision resulted in difficulties with getting his work published in statistics education journals, despite the work having received extremely positive feedback at conferences. He also discusses the meaning of reliability and validity in measurement and provides an example of a simple scheme for analyzing open-ended responses to surveys.