A Commentary on “Gender Bias in Parental Attitude: An Experimental Approach” by Begum, Grossman, and Islam

This paper is a methodological commentary that critically examines Begum, Grossman, and Islam (2018), which claims to identify gender bias in parental attitudes in rural Bangladesh using a randomized lab-in-the-field experiment. We show that the reported randomization did not take place: the treatment groups were instead inherited from an earlier, non-randomized study by Islam (2019) conducted in the same region. This directly contradicts the study design described in the original paper and undermines the validity of comparisons across treatment groups. The commentary therefore highlights serious shortcomings in the study’s transparency and reporting.