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Benefits of megastudies for testing behavioural interventions

Trials of behavioural interventions are hard to compare, hampering policy decision-making. The effects of more than 50 interventions on exercise behaviour have been compared using an experimental design called a megastudy.
  1. Heather Royer

    1. Heather Royer is in the Department of Economics, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California 93106, USA.

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Over the past few decades, empirical work in the behavioural and social sciences has undergone a credibility revolution — a movement to use data to distinguish causality from correlation. Not surprisingly, one of the leading tools in this revolution is the randomized controlled trial (RCT). In these trials, participants are randomly allocated to groups that receive, or do not receive, an intervention. However, the conclusions that can be drawn from RCTs of behavioural interventions can be limited, and the results of different RCTs are difficult to compare. Writing in Nature, Milkman et al.1 show how a ‘megastudy’ — a collection of simultaneous RCTs — could overcome some of the limitations of individual RCTs. The authors’ megastudy tested the effectiveness of 54 behavioural interventions on gym attendance.

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Nature 600, 392-393 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-03400-x

References

  1. Milkman, K. L. et al. Nature 600, 478–483 (2021).

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  8. Andrews, I., Kitagawa, T. & McCloskey, A. NBER Working Pap. No. 25456 (Natl Bur. Econ. Res., 2019).

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Competing Interests

The author declares no competing interests.

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