Towards improved and more transparent ethics in randomised controlled trials in development social science

Financing Municipal Water and Sanitation Services in Nairobi's Informal Settlements

“…The utility rolled out the interventions that were deemed unambiguously useful like jisomee mita training, reminders, and meter readings, and dismissed the use of pre-paid meters in this setting because of their previous experiences finding them to be difficult to maintain and costly to deploy. Guidance on alternative financial arrangements for customers was originally considered to be tested, however it was ultimately decided that anybody that to field experiments (Glennerster and Powers, 2016;Humphreys, 2015;MacKay, 2020) and offered practical guidance on how to assess and communicate the ethical considerations of a study more comprehensively (Asiedu et al, 2021;Evans, 2021). We find this to be a useful starting point to frame the ethical considerations of this research and describe how each principle guided the research process before discussing the ethical considerations of randomization of government policies.…”