Designing Experiments for Impact uses data and experimentation to improve social sector organizations’ products and services.
Students work on a project to design and carry out an experiment intended to drive social impact in collaboration with a partner organization.
Topics include designing and selecting outcome measures that capture the impact of interventions, multi-stage experiments with applications to chatbots, learning how treatment effects vary across subgroups, adaptive experiments using bandits and artificial intelligence, and estimation of policies that target treatments based on subject characteristics.
Experiments may be conducted on the customer base of a partner organization through their digital applications or on subjects recruited through survey platforms or social media. Students from different disciplinary backgrounds will be assigned roles to work in teams on the project.
Project Examples
Faculty
Susan Athey
Who Should Register
Designing Experiments for Impact (ALP 308) is available to the following students:
- Students interested in learning more about how to work in a multi-disciplinary team to use data and statistics to inform business decisions and create social impact
- Second-year MBA and all MSx students at Stanford GSB
- Other Stanford graduate students with a good understanding of financial or data analytic techniques, and an interest in impact or other mission-focused enterprises and investments (application required)