A social experiment is a research project conducted with human subjects in the real world. It typically investigates the effects of a policy intervention by randomly assigning individuals, families, businesses, classrooms, or other units to different treatments or to a controlled condition that represents the status quo. The qualifier "social" distinguishes a policy experiment from a "clinical" experiment, typically a medical intervention within the subject's body, and also from a laboratory experiment, such as a university psychology faculty might conduct under completely controlled conditions. In a social experiment, randomization to assigned treatment is the only element in the subject's environment that the researchers control. All other elements remain exactly what they were.
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Efficacy
Social experiments are often referred to as "the gold standard" for program evaluation and reform processes. In measuring the impact of a social program, the researcher has to assess what the outcomes of the relevant population would have been in the absence of the program. Almost every naturally occurring comparison group, however, will differ from the composition of a non-random treatment group, usually because of selection bias (outside of an experiment, people choose to receive the treatment or choose not to). Randomization creates a control group that is statistically identical in large sample with the group that is assigned to receive the treatment, and in principle there is no selection bias.
History
Social experiments are usually imagined as scientific research where there is assumed an elite strata of professional experts that design and control the "experiment." The gross arrogance of this approach misses the conceptual and pragmatic opportunity to design and implement a social entity that has the power and intention of representing a collective world view for a participating population — a participating population that plays and modifies the collective social intention, beginning with heuristically defined structures that classify the world and the community in terms of a logical game. But don't forget Shakespeare's axiom (?) "All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players." Humans are players (sine quo non of all other species of animals) and humans begin life imitating and acting: wearing costumes and playing roles; directing, participating in relationships of the family and society: this is the strength and future of human evolution. It is within the conceptual grasp of humans to create a structure of groups that represent a collective world view that have modifiable definitions and rules for tweaking and modifying the community with certain criteria in mind: user friendly, operationally defined "truth, freedom, justice, and enjoyment"; and other criteria of shelter, hygiene, defense, commissariat, travel, entertainment, etc. Participation and engagement in social evolution, as a part of chromosome analogous information sets, has not yet appeared within the social matrix; but the concepts and tools already exist in biological and human evolution. A concept of social intelligence and social design is just around the corner.
Social experiments began in the United States as a test of the Negative Income Tax concept in the late 1960s and since then have been conducted on all the populated continents. Some "have pilot tested major innovations in social policy", some "have been used to assess incremental changes in existing programs", while some "have provided the basis for evaluating the overall efficacy of major existing programs. Most "have been used to evaluate policies targeted at disadvantaged population groups".HighScope
The HighScope Perry Preschool Project was evaluated in a randomized controlled trial of 123 children (58 were randomly assigned to a treatment group that received the program and a control group of 65 children that did not). Prior to the program, the preschool and control groups were equivalent in measures of intellectual performance and demographic characteristics. After the program the educational and life outcomes for the children receiving the program were much superior to outcomes for the children not receiving the program. Many of the program effects were significant or approaching significance.
RAND Health Insurance Experiment
The RAND Health Insurance Experiment was an experimental study of health care costs, utilization and outcomes in the United States, which assigned people randomly to different kinds of plans and followed their behavior, from 1974 to 1982. As a result, it provided stronger evidence than studies that examine people afterwards who were not randomly assigned. It concluded that cost sharing reduced "inappropriate or unnecessary" medical care (overutilization), but also reduced "appropriate or needed" medical care. It did not have enough statistical power to tell whether people who got less appropriate or needed care were more likely to die as a result.
Oportunidades/Prospera/Progresa
Oportunidades (now rebranded as "Prospera" ) is a government social assistance (welfare) program in Mexico founded in 2002, based on a previous program called Progresa, created in 1997. It is designed to target poverty by providing cash payments to families in exchange for regular school attendance, health clinic visits, and nutrition support. Oportunidades is credited with decreasing poverty and improving health and educational attainment in regions where it has been deployed.
Moving to Opportunity
Moving to Opportunity for Fair Housing was a randomized social experiment sponsored by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development in the 1990s among 4600 low-income families with children living in high-poverty public housing projects.
Stanford prison experiment
The Stanford prison experiment was a study of the psychological effects of becoming a prisoner or prison guard. The experiment was conducted at Stanford University on August 14–20, 1971, by a team of researchers led by psychology professor Philip Zimbardo using college students. It was funded by the U.S. Office of Naval Research and was of interest to both the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps as an investigation into the causes of conflict between military guards and prisoners. The experiment is a classic study on the psychology of imprisonment and is a topic covered in most introductory psychology textbooks.
Experiments by Muzafer Sherif
Sherif was a founder of modern social psychology, who developed several unique and powerful techniques for understanding social processes, particularly social norms and social conflict. Sherif's experimental study of autokinetic movement demonstrated how mental evaluation norms were created by human beings. Sherif is equally famous for the Robbers Cave Experiments. This series of experiments, begun in Connecticut and concluded in Oklahoma, took boys from intact middle-class families, who were carefully screened to be psychologically normal, delivered them to a summer camp setting (with researchers doubling as counsellors) and created social groups that came into conflict with each other.