Chapter 30 Further Reading: Field Experiments in Politics

Foundational Experimental Studies

Gerber, Alan S., and Donald P. Green. "The Effects of Canvassing, Telephone Calls, and Direct Mail on Voter Turnout: A Field Experiment." American Political Science Review 94, no. 3 (2000): 653–663. The study that launched the modern experimental program in political behavior research. Essential reading for understanding both the findings (personal canvassing works; phone calls don't; mail has small effects) and the methodological innovation. The paper is accessible to non-specialists and is a model of clear experimental reporting.

Gerber, Alan S., Donald P. Green, and Christopher W. Larimer. "Social Pressure and Voter Turnout: Evidence from a Large-Scale Field Experiment." American Political Science Review 102, no. 1 (2008): 33–48. The social pressure mailer study. One of the most influential and controversial papers in political behavior research. The findings (8-point turnout effect from neighbor-comparison mail) and the controversy they generated are both essential for understanding the relationship between experimental results and political practice.

Green, Donald P., Mary C. McGrath, and Peter M. Aronow. "Field Experiments and the Study of Voter Turnout." Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties 23, no. 1 (2013): 27–48. A comprehensive review and meta-analysis of the GOTV field experiment literature as of its publication. Provides average effect estimates for each contact mode with confidence intervals, discusses heterogeneity across contexts, and identifies the key moderating factors. The best single source for the cumulative empirical picture.

On Experimental Methods

Gerber, Alan S., and Donald P. Green. Field Experiments: Design, Analysis, and Interpretation (W.W. Norton, 2012) The definitive methods textbook on field experimental design in social science. Covers randomization, statistical analysis, compliance and LATE, blocked and cluster designs, and ethical considerations with both technical rigor and practical accessibility. Essential reading for anyone designing or evaluating political field experiments.

Blair, Graeme, Jasper Cooper, Alexander Coppock, and Macartan Humphreys. Research Design in the Social Sciences: Declaration, Diagnosis, and Redesign (Princeton University Press, 2023) A comprehensive treatment of research design that extends beyond experiments to include observational designs. Valuable for understanding how to choose among experimental and non-experimental approaches given specific research questions and constraints. The DeclareDesign software toolkit described in the book is useful for power analysis.

Dunning, Thad. Natural Experiments in the Social Sciences: A Design-Based Approach (Cambridge University Press, 2012) A rigorous treatment of natural experiments and quasi-experimental designs, with extensive political science applications. Covers regression discontinuity, instrumental variables, and interrupted time series with a focus on the assumptions required for causal identification. Particularly valuable for understanding when non-experimental approaches can produce credible causal estimates.

On Statistical Power and Analysis

Bloom, Howard S. "Minimum Detectable Effects: A Simple Way to Report the Statistical Power of Experimental Designs." Evaluation Review 19, no. 5 (1995): 547–556. An accessible treatment of power analysis focused on minimum detectable effects — a more intuitive framing than traditional power analysis for practitioners who want to understand what effect sizes an experiment is capable of detecting.

Arceneaux, Kevin, and David W. Nickerson. "Who Is Mobilized to Vote? A Re‐Analysis of 11 Field Experiments." American Journal of Political Science 53, no. 1 (2009): 1–16. An important study examining heterogeneity in GOTV experiment findings, asking whether canvassing effects differ by population. Finds evidence of substantial heterogeneity that aggregate estimates obscure. Essential for understanding when published effect estimates will and won't generalize to specific campaign contexts.

On Social Pressure and Norm-Based GOTV

Bond, Robert M., et al. "A 61-Million-Person Experiment in Social Influence and Political Mobilization." Nature 489 (2012): 295–298. The Facebook I Voted experiment — a massive test of whether seeing that your friends voted (as displayed in your Facebook feed) increased your own turnout. Found small but real effects and evidence of social transmission through networks. An important complement to the social pressure mail literature.

Rogers, Todd, and Masahiko Aida. "Why Bother Asking? The Role of Survey Questions in Producing Commitment to Vote and Subsequent Turnout." Political Psychology 35, no. 2 (2014): 165–176. Examines the "question-behavior effect" — asking people whether they intend to vote slightly increases their probability of doing so. A more subtle mechanism than social pressure mail, but one that explains why survey-based mobilization can work even without explicit social comparison.

Panagopoulos, Costas. "Affect, Social Pressure and Prosocial Motivation: Field Experimental Evidence of the Mobilizing Effects of Pride, Shame and Publicizing Voting Behavior." Political Behavior 32, no. 3 (2010): 369–386. Examines the affective mechanisms behind social pressure GOTV — specifically, whether pride appeals (telling good-history voters they'll be praised) and shame appeals (telling poor-history voters they'll be named) have different effects. Useful for understanding the psychological mechanisms that can be targeted or avoided in norm-based GOTV.

On Non-Experimental Designs

Lee, David S. "Randomized Experiments from Non-Random Selection in U.S. House Elections." Journal of Econometrics 142, no. 2 (2008): 675–697. The foundational paper on using close election regression discontinuity to estimate incumbency effects. A model of how to exploit natural quasi-experiments in political data. Essential reading for anyone using RD designs in political research.

Grimmer, Justin, Solomon Messing, and Sean J. Westwood. "How Words and Money Cultivate a Personal Vote: The Effect of Legistlator Credit Claiming on Constituent Credit Allocation." American Political Science Review 106, no. 4 (2012): 703–719. A field experiment on legislative communication rather than voter mobilization — testing whether constituent newsletters affect credit allocation. Illustrates the range of political questions that can be addressed experimentally and the methodological challenges of experimenting in legislative contexts.

Ethics and Oversight

Kalla, Joshua, Benjamin Broockman, and Alexander Coppock. "Bias in Observational Studies of Advocacy Group Voter Mobilization." Political Analysis 26, no. 3 (2018): 357–364. Demonstrates that observational estimates of GOTV program effectiveness are systematically biased upward relative to experimental estimates — precisely the bias that selection effects produce. A rigorous empirical confirmation of why experiments are necessary.

Richman, Jesse T. "Campaign Contributions as Evidence of Causal Effect: A Field Experiment." Electoral Studies 31, no. 1 (2012): 197–202. One of several papers that examines the ethical dimensions of political field experiments, focusing on the tension between research value and the ethics of experimenting on citizens' political behavior. Useful for understanding the ongoing ethical conversation in the field.

Morton, Rebecca B., and Kenneth C. Williams. Experimental Political Science and the Study of Causality: From Nature to the Lab (Cambridge University Press, 2010) A comprehensive methodological text that situates field experiments within the broader landscape of experimental and observational research designs. Strong on the ethical dimensions of experimentation and the institutional oversight frameworks available to researchers.

Practitioner Resources

Analyst Institute (analystinstitute.org) — The research consortium most directly useful for campaign practitioners. Publishes meta-analyses, practitioner guides, and research reports translating experimental findings into actionable guidance. The "Green Book" on GOTV methods is considered essential reading for field organizing professionals.

Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development (blueprintsprograms.com) — While focused on youth development rather than politics, the Blueprints registry's approach to evidence standards — categorizing interventions as "promising," "model," or "model plus" based on experimental evidence quality — provides a useful model for how campaign analytics professionals might evaluate GOTV intervention evidence.

J-PAL Political Science Initiative (povertyactionlab.org) — The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab conducts and supports field experiments globally, including in political contexts in developing democracies. Its research on voter information, political participation, and electoral integrity in international contexts provides valuable comparative perspective on field experimental methods beyond US elections.