“It’s hard to know what works without seeing the evidence. When hearing about a new program, reserve judgment about its effectiveness until you’ve seen a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.” — Vox Policy & Politics

Ten social intervention programs that underwent rigorous evaluations to determine their impact are featured in a quiz to test one’s knowledge of whether the programs are effective.

According to this Vox Policy & Politics article, the nonprofit 80,000 Hours selected 10 major social intervention programs that had been thoroughly tested by researchers conducting multiple trials to determine their impact.

The interventions were taken from those reviewed by the Campbell Collaboration, which, states the article, “brings together all the highest-quality research that’s available on major social interventions to decide whether they’re effective.”

Two projects conducted by the WestEd Justice & Prevention Research Center are included in the select group: Formal System Processing of Juvenile Offenders and Scared Straight.

The more than 100 original test takers were asked to guess whether each of the 10 chosen interventions, described in a short, reader-friendly paragraph, have a positive effect, no effect, or negative effect.

The key takeaway?

It isn’t possible for the public to know ahead of time whether a nice-sounding idea will actually help people or hurt them,” states the article. “Instead, you have to get experimental evidence. What trials have been run? How did the people who didn’t get the program compare with those who did? Were they comparable groups? What do experts who conduct reviews of the field’s research conclude?”

Take the quiz and see how your results stack up to other test takers.