TY - JOUR T1 - A False Dichotomy: RCTs and Their Contributions to Evidence-Based Public Health JF - Global Health: Science and Practice JO - GLOB HEALTH SCI PRACT SP - 138 LP - 140 DO - 10.9745/GHSP-D-14-00245 VL - 3 IS - 1 AU - Laurel E Hatt AU - Minki Chatterji AU - Leslie Miles AU - Alison B Comfort AU - Benjamin W Bellows AU - Francis O Okello Y1 - 2015/03/01 UR - http://www.ghspjournal.org/content/3/1/138.abstract N2 - Global public health should rely on those research methods that best answer the pressing questions at hand. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and other rigorous impact evaluation methods have a critical role to play in public health. See Shelton's response as well as related article by Shelton.Editor-in-Chief James Shelton's editorial on September 12, 2014, concluded with a laudable call for studies in global health that increase understanding of the “‘how and when’ of implementation at scale”1, p. 257: Bringing together evidence arising from different methodologies with sufficient detail to illuminate causal relationships is essential to applying such knowledge to real-world public health problems across diverse situations. Indeed, triangulating among different information sources and reviewing evidence systematically are the hallmarks of nuanced, ethically conducted, effective public health research. However, we take issue with Shelton's opening statement that “randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have limited utility for public health” (p. 253). Rigorously designed randomized experiments and other impact evaluation methods have a critical role to play in global public health—not just for answering small-scale questions of efficacy but also for gauging the effectiveness of scaled-up approaches.Setting RCTs in opposition to other systematic approaches for generating knowledge creates a false dichotomy, and it distracts from the more important question that Shelton addresses—namely, which research method is best suited for the question at hand? The choice of a research method is not an either/or proposition but depends on the particular research question to be answered and the context. So, when do RCTs make sense, what value do they add, and how do they relate to other research methodologies?Setting RCTs in opposition to other systematic research approaches creates a … ER -