Pair-Matching with Random Allocation in Prospective Controlled Trials: The Evolution of a Novel Design in Criminology and Medicine, 1926-2021

• In Event: The Future of Criminology can be Found in its Past

Abstract

Objective: Pair-matching with random allocation in prospective controlled trials represents a novel and highly rigorous design. First use of the design can be traced to medicine (in 1926) and criminology and the social sciences (in 1935). Beginning with these trials, we examine the subsequent history of pair-matched RCTs, and related attention to stratification prior to randomization, in both criminology and medicine over almost a century to illustrate shared interest in the design’s advantages and disadvantages.
Data/Methods: We draw upon a wide range of historical and contemporary sources, including historical archives and writings on the first trials in criminology and medicine, prior reviews of RCTs and pair-matched RCTs, and searches of selected journal databases.
Results: The first trials draw attention to key factors that remain central to contemporary use, including concerns about covariate imbalance when randomization is used on its own, potential to improve study power when matching is effective, and the ability to deal with differential attrition in follow-ups. The evolution of the design also shows that the single most important application of pair-matched RCTs is when the units are clusters of individuals or places.
Conclusions/Implications: Over the 20th and 21st centuries, criminology and medicine have continued to wrestle with methodologies to most efficiently and robustly compare like with like. Both, in this setting, have turned to pair-matched randomization, though less often than its advocates would like. It is this and other shared interests between criminology/social sciences and medicine/public health that help us reimagine possibilities for advancing knowledge and improving public policy.

Authors

• Brandon C. Welsh, Northeastern University / Harvard Medical School

• Scott Podolsky, Harvard Medical School

• Steven N. Zane, Florida State University