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The Social Costs of Methodological Rigor

A Note on the Problem of Massive Attrition

Louisiana State University

This article argues that certain threats to validity arise from the social, rather than methodological, consequences of research design. The need for an evaluator to attend to both methodological and social concerns is demonstrated by an example where the unchecked effects of the social consequences of a methodologically rigorous research design invalidated most of a planned evaluation. A second example is presented in which explicit trade-off decisions between methodological rigor and social costs enabled the evaluation effort to proceed.

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