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Random assignment or random placement is an experimental technique for assigning human participants or animal subjects to different groups in an experiment (e.g., a treatment group versus a control group) using randomization, such as by a chance procedure (e.g., flipping a coin) or a random number generator. [1]
Randomization is widely applied in various fields, especially in scientific research, statistical analysis, and resource allocation, to ensure fairness and validity in the outcomes. [8] [9] [10] In various contexts, randomization may involve Generating Random Permutations: This is essential in various situations, such as shuffling cards. By ...
Random assignment is the process of assigning individuals at random to groups or to different groups in an experiment, so that each individual of the population has the same chance of becoming a participant in the study.
In the statistical theory of design of experiments, randomization involves randomly allocating the experimental units across the treatment groups.For example, if an experiment compares a new drug against a standard drug, then the patients should be allocated to either the new drug or to the standard drug control using randomization.
Random assignment to treatment ensures that units assigned to the treatment and units assigned to the control are identical (over a large number of iterations of the experiment). Indeed, units in both groups have identical distributions of covariates and potential outcomes.
In an experiment with random assignment, study units have the same chance of being assigned to a given treatment condition. As such, random assignment ensures that both the experimental and control groups are equivalent. In a quasi-experimental design, assignment to a given treatment condition is based on something other than random assignment.
In practice, the randomization is typically performed by a computer program. However, the randomization can also be generated from random number tables or by some physical mechanism (e.g., drawing the slips of paper).
Under random assignment, outcomes of field experiments are reflective of the real-world because subjects are assigned to groups based on non-deterministic probabilities. [3] Two other core assumptions underlie the ability of the researcher to collect unbiased potential outcomes: excludability and non-interference.