Guide on the social experimentation protocol

This guide is intended at policy makers willing to embark in a social experimentation in the context of the PROGRESS call for proposals. It is divided in three parts. The first part briefly lays out basic principles to follow in order to design a potentially relevant policy intervention. Those principles are illustrated with an example. The second and third parts present six methods commonly used to measure the efficacy of a social program. In the second part, the principle of each method is presented, and methods are compared from the point of view of the reliability of the results they deliver. The third part considers the costs induced by each method, and their complexity to implement in practice.