jppm-methods

• SKILL.mdcore · 6,339 bytes

# Methods & Evaluation Design (jppm-methods)

## When to trigger

- Deciding whether the question needs an experiment, a policy evaluation, a survey, or a synthesis
- A policy rolled out and you must find a credible counterfactual before claiming impact
- Your label/disclosure experiment uses stimuli no agency could ever mandate
- The sample excludes the very population the policy is meant to protect
- You are combining lab and field evidence and need the pieces to carry distinct weight

## Methodological pluralism, disciplined by the policy question

JPP&M accepts a wider methods palette than most marketing journals — randomized experiments, quasi-experimental evaluation, surveys, field and archival data, meta-analysis, qualitative work — but the choice must follow from the **policy inference** required. Two questions dominate: *Would the proposed instrument work?* (prospective — usually experiments with realistic stimuli) and *Did the enacted instrument work?* (retrospective — evaluation designs with explicit counterfactuals). A submission that answers the retrospective question with before/after trends, or the prospective one with fantasy stimuli, fails regardless of statistical polish. Missing counterfactual reasoning in an evaluation design is one of this journal's known desk-reject patterns.