Designing and evaluating digital interventions for social impact

Contributor(s): Professor Susan Athey | Digital interventions are well-suited for social impact applications because they are relatively inexpensive to develop and update, they can be targeted to meet the needs of individuals, and they are highly scalable. This talk will review several recent implementations of digital technology to social impact applications, including childhood literacy, programs to enable career transitions and demonstrate skills, and digital assistants that help workers and service providers be more effective. In each case, a new digital product was developed and evaluated in the field. The evidence shows that the interventions work better for some types of individuals than others, illustrating the importance of targeting interventions where they are most effective.