Doug Johnson

Doug Johnson

About me

I am an independent consultant specializing in impact evaluations of development interventions, especially health and education interventions. I use this space mainly as a place to organize my own thoughts and try out new code but if you find any of this content useful you are welcome to copy it. This blog is maintained in R and RStudio using the blogdown package so if you would like to access the code for any post (without cutting and pasting from the html output), you can find the raw code at the github repo.

Download my resumé.

Popular Topics

Bayesian analysis Education Impact evaluations Python R Sampling Statistics

Recent Posts

Why Nothing Scales Doesn't Mean Nothing Works
Jason Kerwin, a development economist at the University of Minnesota, wrote an interesting blog post some time back in which he argued that nothing scales. Kerwin’s point was that we (i.
Last updated on Jan 27, 2022 4 min read
Brief Notes on Kasy and Sautmann's Exploration Sampling
I’ve been spending a fair bit of time digging through the literature on the cognitive science of learning and one consistent result from the literature is that taking notes (ideally good notes) is really helpful for making sure that you learn and remember something.
Last updated on Jan 14, 2022 6 min read
Stan vs PyMC3 vs Bean Machine
I have been a light user of Stan and RStan for some time and while there are a lot of things I really like about the language (such as the awesome community you can turn to for support and ShinyStan for inspecting Stan output) there are also a few things that I find frustrating.
Last updated on Jan 14, 2022 11 min read
Conventional Attrition Tests Don't Make Much Sense - Here's a Better Way
A while back, I was involved in an education RCT that had pretty high (40% or so) attrition. What’s worse, the remaining treatment and control students appeared to be quite different from each other.
Last updated on Dec 10, 2021 4 min read
Is GiveWell Right that Health Interventions Should Prioritized over Education Interventions?
Most articles on international education start out with a well-worn two-part lede: first, developing countries are facing a “learning crisis;” second, there is a mountain of evidence demonstrating the long-term effects of education on everything from personal (and country-level) incomes to health.
Last updated on Dec 10, 2021 11 min read
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Journal articles

Johnson, D. and Parrado, A. 2021. Assessing the Assessments: Taking Stock of Learning Outcomes Data in India. International journal of educational development, 84. pp. 102409. [code]

Johnson, D., Juras, R., Riley, P., Chatterji, M., Sloane, P., Choi, S.K. and Johns, B., 2017. A randomized controlled trial of the impact of a family planning mHealth service on knowledge and use of contraception. Contraception, 95(1), pp.90-97.

Ugaz, J., Leegwater, A., Chatterji, M., Johnson, D., Baruwa, S., Toriola, M. and Kinnan, C., 2017. Impact of family planning and business trainings on private-sector health care providers in Nigeria. International perspectives on sexual and reproductive health, 43(2), pp.51-65.

Johnson, D. and Ugaz, J., 2016. Determinants of quality of family planning counseling among private health facilities in Lagos. Studies in family planning, 47(3), pp.239-251.

Johnson, D., 2016. Collecting data from mHealth users via SMS surveys: A case study in Kenya. Survey practice, 9(1), p.2824.

Johnson, D., and Cheng, X. 2014. The role of private health providers in HIV testing: analysis of data from 18 countries. International journal for equity in health, 13.1: 1-10.

Working papers

Fischer, T., Johnson, D., and Stein, D. 2021. Informing Specific Decisions with Rigorous Evidence: Designing and Analyzing Decision Focused Evaluations.

Johnson, D. 2011. Government Cash Transfer Programs in Nepal

Johnson, D. 2011. Do Health Camps Make People Healthier? Evidence from an RCT of Health Camps on Usage of RSBY

Johnson, D., and Meka, S. 2010. Access to Finance in Andhra Pradesh. Centre for Microfinance Working Paper Series.

Sampson, R., Johnson, D., Somanchi, A., Barton, H., Joshi, R., Seth, M., and Shotland, M. 2019. Insights from Rapid Evaluations of EdTech Products.

Johnson, D. 2009. How Do Caste, Gender and Party Affiliation of Locally Elected Leaders Affect Implementation of NREGA?

Johnson, D. 2008. Case Study on the Use of Smartcards to Deliver Government Benefits in Andhra Pradesh, India

Johnson, D., Goldstein-Plesser, G. and Zajonc, T. 2013. Can Foreign Aid Create an Incentive for Good Governance? Evidence from the MCC

Op eds

Johnson, D. and Chattopadhyay, S. 2021. Reform Board Exams to Improve Learning Outcomes. India Development Review

Johnson, D. and Chattopadhyay, S. 2020. National Education Policy 2020: Getting the basics right. India Development Review

Johnson, D. and Sampson, R. 2020. India’s coronavirus lockdown has put the spotlight back on television as an ed-tech tool. Quartz

Johnson, D. and Sampson, R. 2020. Tech-ing Up: The Opportunities and Obstacles of Teaching with Technology in India. RISE Blog.

Johnson, D. and Chattopadhyay, S. 2012. UID: A Uniquely Nonsensical Debate. Mint.

Johnson, D. and Chattopadhyay, S. 2011. Idle Scheming. Mint