1.45 Assessing charitable organizations: Many people do research on charitable organizations before deciding where to donate their money. Tina Rosenberg (2012) reported that traditionally many people have used sources such as Charity Navigator or the Better Business Bureau’s Web sites. Both of these sites rate organizations more highly if the organizations use less of their donation money for fundraising or administration and more of it for the cause they are supporting. On Charity Navigator, for example, Doctors Without Borders, a nonprofit focused on health and medical needs, gets a rating of 57.11 out of 70 based on its financial practices, accountability, and transparency; this puts that organization in the second of Charity Navigator’s five tiers (charitynavigator.org).

a. How does Charity Navigator operationalize a good charity?

b. What kind of variable is the score of 57.11 out of 70— nominal, ordinal, or scale? Explain your answer.

c. What kind of variable is the tier, second out of five— nominal, ordinal, or scale? Explain your answer.

d. There are many types of charities. Doctors Without Borders focuses on health and medical needs. What kind of variable is its type of charity—nominal, ordinal, or scale? Explain your answer.

e. According to Rosenberg (2012), Toby Ord, a moral philosopher from Oxford University, thinks the traditional operational definition of what constitutes a good charity is too limited. He has five criteria that he sees as important for a good charity: It targets the most serious problems (e.g., disease over art). It uses evidence-based practices. It uses cost-effective interventions. It is competent and honest. And it “can make good use of each additional dollar.” Ord touts an organization called GiveWell as a source for ratings that incorporates many of his criteria (givewell.org). Doctors Without Borders fares less well on GiveWell; the site reports: “We believe that the overall cost-effectiveness of [Doctors Without Borders’] activities are unlikely to compare well with those of our top charities.” Explain why Web sites like Charity Navigator might look just at measures relating to finances, as opposed to a fuller definition such as that described by Ord.

f. Which is more likely to be reliable, the rating by Charity Navigator or that by GiveWell? Explain your answer. g. Which is more likely to be valid, the rating by Charity Navigator or that by GiveWell? Explain your answer. h. If you were to monitor whether increased donation funds led to a lower death rate in a country, would that be an experiment or a correlational study? Explain your answer. i. If you were to randomly assign some regions to receive more donation funds and other regions to receive fewer funds, and then track the death rate in both sets of regions, would that be an experiment or a correlational study? Explain your answer.