How to Account for Alternatives When Comparing Effects: Revisiting `Bringing Education to Afghan Girls' Dana Burde, Joel Middleton, Cyrus Samii and Ye Wang∗ June 30, 2021 ∗Dana Burde is Associate Professor and Director of International Education at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, New York University (Email:
[email protected]). Joel Middleton is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley (email:
[email protected]). Cyrus Samii (contact author) is Associate Professor of Politics at New York arXiv:2106.15076v1 [stat.AP] 29 Jun 2021 University (Email:
[email protected]). Ye Wang is PhD Candidate in Politics at New York University and Doctoral Fellow at University of California, San Diego (Email:
[email protected]). This research comes as part of the Assessment of Learning and Social Effects of Community Based Education in Afghanistan (ALSE) project (www.alseproject.com), supported by a grant from the United States Agency for Interna- tional Development. It is approved by the New York University institutional review board. Special thanks to the ALSE research and management team, Amy Kapit, Jo Kelcey, Matthew Lisiecki, Vedrana Misic, Otgonjargal Okhidoi, Mohammad Amin Sadiqi, Cornelia Sage, and Susana Toro Isaza, and to the ALSE project associates Zabihullah Buda, Hamidullah Gharibzada, Mustafa Hasani, Abdul Hamid Hatsaandh, Ahmad Tamim Naseh, Mohammad Jawed Nazari, Iqbal Ali Shahrwand, and Mohammad Amin Zafari. For helpful comments, we thank seminar participants at AALIMS, the Center for Global Development, and the Oxford University Global Priorities Institute. How to Account for Alternatives When Comparing Effects: Revisiting `Bringing Education to Afghan Girls' Abstract This paper uses a \principal strata" approach to decompose treatment effects and interpret why a schooling intervention that yielded exceptional initial effects yielded substantially smaller effects in a replication years later.