The Potential Outcomes Framework

The Potential Outcomes Framework is a way to understand the effect of a treatment or intervention by considering what would happen both if the individual receives it and if they do not. For each person, there are two possible outcomes: one if treated and one if not. The key challenge is that we can only observe one outcome (the actual one), making it tricky to measure the true effect directly. This framework helps researchers estimate the average impact of a treatment across a group by comparing outcomes between those who received it and those who did not, accounting for differences in individual circumstances.