ArticlePNAS nexus2022
A guide to megastudies.
Article in PNAS nexus, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed.
- Article
- A megastudy of behavioral interventions to catalyze public, political, and financial climate advocacy.PNAS nexus · 2026Article
- Article
- A national megastudy shows that email nudges to elementary school teachers boost student math achievement, particularly when personalized.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Can science-based interventions tamp down polarization?Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Effectiveness of ex ante honesty oaths in reducing dishonesty depends on content.Nature human behaviour · 2025Article
- How to design and conduct a megastudy.Nature human behaviour · 2024Article
- The Whys and Hows of Theory-Comparing Cognitive Science and Economics.Computational brain & behavior · 2024Article
- Article
- Article
- Field testing the transferability of behavioural science knowledge on promoting vaccinations.Nature human behaviour · 2024Article
- Addressing climate change with behavioral science: A global intervention tournament in 63 countries.Science advances · 2024Article
- Psychological inoculation strategies to fight climate disinformation across 12 countries.Nature human behaviour · 2024Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
How can behavioral insights best be leveraged to solve pressing policy challenges? Because research studies are typically designed to test the validity of a particular idea, surprisingly little is known about the relative efficacy of different approaches to changing behavior in any given policy context. We discuss megastudies as a research approach that can surmount this and other obstacles to developing optimal behaviorally informed policy interventions. We define a megastudy as "a massive field experiment in which many different treatments are tested synchronously in one large sample using a common, objectively measured outcome." We summarize this apples-to-apples approach to research and lay out recommendations, limitations, and promising future directions for scholars who might want to conduct or evaluate megastudies.
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.