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1. There isn't a control group, so there really isn't a way to tell the effect. A regular $50 lump sum can be used for other stability enhancing purchases since

1. There isn't a control group, so there really isn't a way to tell the effect. A regular $50 lump sum can be used for other stability enhancing purchases since it wasn't constrained for use on housing. Something like a pre-paid phone, that is requisite first steps for other improvements. 2. They measured more than just housing attainment, and there are definitely patterns that suggest that the $1000 group had a higher impact. 3. The selection process was done through outreach agencies, who recruited from people already seeking help. That group seems likely to already be on a path away from homelessness, vs. those who do not seek external help. Really, this is a clickbait article, written about a preliminary/inadequate study. The actual data is here: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/64f507a995b636019ef8853a/t/6671a15eec7a812dee108e7c/1718722914185/FINAL_DBIP+Year+One+Quantitative+Research+Report.pdf https://static1.squarespace.com/static/64f507a995b636019ef88...

moi2388 2y ago
It most definitely is a control group is what you are researching is if the amount of money matters. Just not if you try to measure if any amount of money VS none matters
- dghlsakjg 2y ago
  No. A control group is a pretty well agreed upon term. It is the group to which no intervention is given. There was no control group. Read the actual paper linked. You can sort of use an intervention group as a control group in clinical studies when, for example, comparing an old medication against a new one. This works because the original study of the old medication had a control group that you can infer as valid for comparison to the new medication. You are correct that we can infer whether the amount of intervention matters, but there is no way to know the effect of those first $50. Diminishing marginal utility theory from economics tells us that the first $50 is going to be those with the greatest effect, so this study is missing a massive piece of the puzzle.
  - carlmr 2y ago
    $50 is more like a placebo control, than a non-placebo control. It's not enough money to be able to afford housing, but it may have an effect of making people feel like somebody cares, i.e. a mental effect, just like a placebo can help patients in other studies.
    - dghlsakjg 2y ago
      READ THE STUDY. Housing attainment is just one thing they were measuring. $50 is not a placebo or a control. Again, those have actual definitions when it comes to science, even social science. There is a damn good reason that the actual paper never called it a control group, or tried to imply it. $50 is real. For a homeless person, $50 cash in your pocket will provide an actual, not perceived effect. I'm not saying that $50/mo can't act as an effective control. I'm saying that there is no evidence available to reach that conclusion. There are economic theories that suggest that the first $50 is more important than subsequent amounts, so it would be important to prove or disprove that in the real world. There is also the mental effect as you pointed out, but if you read the study you would know that all of the people recruited for this study were recruited through relationships at support agencies. Meaning that they were already in touch with agencies that gave the feeling of people caring about them.
      - rayiner 2y ago
        $50 is exactly like a placebo control. It’s there to isolate the effect of the money itself, and exclude the effect of participation in the study versus non-participation in the study. What the study shows is that the extra $950 basically makes no difference in housing attainment. That should be the headline conclusion.
        dghlsakjg 2y ago
        I’m agreeing that the data says there isn’t a difference between 50 and 1000 for housing attainment. $50/mo is like a control only if there is evidence to support that $50 has the same effect as $0. That evidence does not exist. We can make a guess, but it is a guess that goes against experimentally demonstrated economic theory around marginal utility. I guess we just disagree on what a control group is. I think of it as a group who are not provided any form of effective intervention. A placebo is an intervention where the user does not know they intentionally have been given an ineffective intervention. It is impossible to not know you were given $50, so I don’t know how this could be considered a placebo. A placebo controlled study is when you give a placebo to a control group who do not know if they are receiving a placebo. The argument I think you are making is that $50 is so small as to be irrelevant. But it is neither a control nor a placebo by almost any definition. And there is no data to suggest what you are asserting even though it feels intuitive to make the guess.
rayiner 2y ago
The $50 seems calculated to be just enough to keep the control group participating in the study. If you gave nothing, many study participants might not have bothered participating.
- dghlsakjg 2y ago
  Participation in the survey wasn’t required to receive the funds for any of the groups. The link to the study is right there. There was no control group. That term is well defined, and giving an intervention is the definition of a treatment group.
  - hollerith 2y ago
    What cause do you imagine you are helping with your rigid insistence on your definition? What good do you think you might be doing?
    - dghlsakjg 2y ago
      The claim that giving $50 is a control assumes or at least hints that you would get the same outcome giving $0 as you would $50. Because the study showed that there were basically the same results across all treatment groups in some categories (notably, rental housing attainment), the logical conclusion is that giving $0 is the same as giving $1k in affecting the rate of rental housing attainment, if you accept that "study group c" -as the study authors labelled it- was a control. Of course if you read the data, you can see that there is noticeable effects unrelated to housing attainment that scale with more money. So cynically, which is happening a lot in this thread, people are saying that there is basically no benefit to providing additional money at all, which is a conclusion that can only be arrived at by assuming that $0 == $50. As I pointed out elsewhere, economic theory around marginal utility says that the first $50 is going to provide more utility than any subsequent amount. For someone on the street, $50/month may well be a massive improvement in QOL. Put this way, since there is no control group, we can't tell how much of ANY of the effects comes from the first $50 vs. people just being able to pull themselves out of homelessness through other means. We can make assumptions, but that is a great way to come to wrong conclusions. There is a good reason that most hard sciences will not accept a study that doesn't have an actual control group. To answer your question about what good I am doing: 1. I am educating people as to why a rigorous control is necessary to reach solid conclusions, and hopefully getting them to understand why a business insider article is a shit substitute for reading the actual data. 2. I am pointing out that we cannot conclude that $0 == $50 == $1,000 when it comes to housing attainment because that data doesn't exist (we CAN say that in this study $50/mo == $1000/mo when it comes to housing outcomes) I want people to understand that this study is far from conclusive in regards to rental attainment.

moi2388 2y ago

It most definitely is a control group is what you are researching is if the amount of money matters. Just not if you try to measure if any amount of money VS none matters

dghlsakjg 2y ago
No. A control group is a pretty well agreed upon term. It is the group to which no intervention is given. There was no control group. Read the actual paper linked. You can sort of use an intervention group as a control group in clinical studies when, for example, comparing an old medication against a new one. This works because the original study of the old medication had a control group that you can infer as valid for comparison to the new medication. You are correct that we can infer whether the amount of intervention matters, but there is no way to know the effect of those first $50. Diminishing marginal utility theory from economics tells us that the first $50 is going to be those with the greatest effect, so this study is missing a massive piece of the puzzle.
- carlmr 2y ago
  $50 is more like a placebo control, than a non-placebo control. It's not enough money to be able to afford housing, but it may have an effect of making people feel like somebody cares, i.e. a mental effect, just like a placebo can help patients in other studies.
  - dghlsakjg 2y ago
    READ THE STUDY. Housing attainment is just one thing they were measuring. $50 is not a placebo or a control. Again, those have actual definitions when it comes to science, even social science. There is a damn good reason that the actual paper never called it a control group, or tried to imply it. $50 is real. For a homeless person, $50 cash in your pocket will provide an actual, not perceived effect. I'm not saying that $50/mo can't act as an effective control. I'm saying that there is no evidence available to reach that conclusion. There are economic theories that suggest that the first $50 is more important than subsequent amounts, so it would be important to prove or disprove that in the real world. There is also the mental effect as you pointed out, but if you read the study you would know that all of the people recruited for this study were recruited through relationships at support agencies. Meaning that they were already in touch with agencies that gave the feeling of people caring about them.
    - rayiner 2y ago
      $50 is exactly like a placebo control. It’s there to isolate the effect of the money itself, and exclude the effect of participation in the study versus non-participation in the study. What the study shows is that the extra $950 basically makes no difference in housing attainment. That should be the headline conclusion.
      - dghlsakjg 2y ago
        I’m agreeing that the data says there isn’t a difference between 50 and 1000 for housing attainment. $50/mo is like a control only if there is evidence to support that $50 has the same effect as $0. That evidence does not exist. We can make a guess, but it is a guess that goes against experimentally demonstrated economic theory around marginal utility. I guess we just disagree on what a control group is. I think of it as a group who are not provided any form of effective intervention. A placebo is an intervention where the user does not know they intentionally have been given an ineffective intervention. It is impossible to not know you were given $50, so I don’t know how this could be considered a placebo. A placebo controlled study is when you give a placebo to a control group who do not know if they are receiving a placebo. The argument I think you are making is that $50 is so small as to be irrelevant. But it is neither a control nor a placebo by almost any definition. And there is no data to suggest what you are asserting even though it feels intuitive to make the guess.

rayiner 2y ago

The $50 seems calculated to be just enough to keep the control group participating in the study. If you gave nothing, many study participants might not have bothered participating.

dghlsakjg 2y ago
Participation in the survey wasn’t required to receive the funds for any of the groups. The link to the study is right there. There was no control group. That term is well defined, and giving an intervention is the definition of a treatment group.
- hollerith 2y ago
  What cause do you imagine you are helping with your rigid insistence on your definition? What good do you think you might be doing?
  - dghlsakjg 2y ago
    The claim that giving $50 is a control assumes or at least hints that you would get the same outcome giving $0 as you would $50. Because the study showed that there were basically the same results across all treatment groups in some categories (notably, rental housing attainment), the logical conclusion is that giving $0 is the same as giving $1k in affecting the rate of rental housing attainment, if you accept that "study group c" -as the study authors labelled it- was a control. Of course if you read the data, you can see that there is noticeable effects unrelated to housing attainment that scale with more money. So cynically, which is happening a lot in this thread, people are saying that there is basically no benefit to providing additional money at all, which is a conclusion that can only be arrived at by assuming that $0 == $50. As I pointed out elsewhere, economic theory around marginal utility says that the first $50 is going to provide more utility than any subsequent amount. For someone on the street, $50/month may well be a massive improvement in QOL. Put this way, since there is no control group, we can't tell how much of ANY of the effects comes from the first $50 vs. people just being able to pull themselves out of homelessness through other means. We can make assumptions, but that is a great way to come to wrong conclusions. There is a good reason that most hard sciences will not accept a study that doesn't have an actual control group. To answer your question about what good I am doing: 1. I am educating people as to why a rigorous control is necessary to reach solid conclusions, and hopefully getting them to understand why a business insider article is a shit substitute for reading the actual data. 2. I am pointing out that we cannot conclude that $0 == $50 == $1,000 when it comes to housing attainment because that data doesn't exist (we CAN say that in this study $50/mo == $1000/mo when it comes to housing outcomes) I want people to understand that this study is far from conclusive in regards to rental attainment.