The Rise of Experimentation in Political Science
Title
The Rise of Experimentation in Political Science
Author
Rogowski, Ronald
Research Area
Methods of Research
Topic
Research Methods — Quantitative
Abstract
Experimental research has expanded markedly in political science over the past 30 years: the number of experimental articles in the American Political Science Review has almost quintupled since the mid‐1980s. The main reason is intellectual: most scholars by now agree that random assignment of cases to “treatment” provides the most (perhaps the only) convincing evidence of causation. The second reason is technical advances that permit kinds of experimentation that, before about 2000, hardly existed: field, natural, and survey experiments. These have grown, while laboratory experiments have receded. While concerns remain about the external validity of these experiments, both journals and funding agencies will likely move increasingly in this direction.