A Commentary on “Gender Bias in Parental Attitude

An Experimental Approach” by Begum, Grossman, and Islam (2018)

Bibliographic Data

ID11620432
AuthorsOlle Hammar (0000-0002-2341-3751, Linnaeus University, corresponding author), Carl Bonander (0000-0002-1189-9950, University of Gothenburg), Gunther Bensch (0000-0001-7964-7533, RWI – Leibniz Institute for Economic Research), Niklas Jakobsson (0000-0002-7143-8793, Karlstad Business School, Karlstad University, Karlstad, Sweden), Abel Brodeur (0000-0003-3980-4324, University of Ottawa)
Year2025
Volume62
Issue6
Pages1791-1799
Publication date2025-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueDemography (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0070-3370 • E-ISSN: 1533-7790
PublisherSpringer Science+Business Media (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1215/00703370-12344620
PMID41346336
OpenAlexW4417029871
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited6

Begum et al. (2018) examined gender bias in parental attitudes using an experimental approach in rural Bangladesh. Households were reported as randomly assigned to treatment conditions in a lab-in-the-field allocation task. We show that the group assignment was inherited from Islam (2019), a previous, nonrandomized experiment conducted in the same region. The lack of randomization contradicts the design descriptions provided by the authors in Begum et al. (2018) and elsewhere and raises concerns about the validity of comparisons across treatment groups. This also points to serious shortcomings in the reporting and transparency of the study design-issues that mirror those that led to the retraction of Islam (2019) from the European Economic Review

Islam · Population · Random assignment · Randomization · Research design · Transparency (behavior · Advanced Causal Inference Techniques · Demographic Trends and Gender Preferences · Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics