Be critical

Only a fair comparison provides trustworthy evidence

A fair comparisons of interventions provides the most trustworthy evidence about the effect of an intervention.

Unless a management intervention is compared to something else (for example, a similar intervention or simply doing nothing), it is not possible to know what would happen without the intervention, so it is difficult to attribute outcomes to the intervention.

A comparison, however, should be fair: the only important difference between the groups that are compared should be the intervention they receive.

BEWARE

Claims about the effect of an intervention that are not based on a fair comparison are less trustworthy