alt Hacker News> simply stating "stayed in school" feels like an oversimplification of what was done here
> Am I misunderstanding something here?
"Stayed in school" is a clear, binary condition that's easily measured and has obvious benefits to everyone because everyone is at least a little educated.
If I ask you "is your house temperature livable?" and you say "the thermometer says 20", answered. You didn't say "well, I purchased and installed a heat pump and duct distribution system capable of forcing warmed air to be distributed to the remainder of the house, which keeps the temperature in a habitable range, then ensured power supply remains connected and kept it on" and say I didn't really explain the important part.
Except that your example is a simple conversation vs explaining the outcome of a study/program. That immediately requires more information to actually convey what did and did not happen.
For example, I could read the actual details on this and possibly determine that they replace school with some other (cheaper) program that just keeps the girls busy.
Or I could determine that all we really need to do is launch an outreach marketing program encouraging that girls stay in school and ignore all of the other support that was given.
One of those is supported by the headline and one is supported by the lack of information about what actually helped.
If by your example there was a study on how we made a previously unlivable area, suitable for humans in their homes but all it said was "well the temperature is X" than you would have questions on how exactly that was achieved.
Same with living in space, if NASA told us that the way astronauts are living on the space station with "well there is oxygen" we wouldn't accept that because there is obviously more going on.
Wanting to actually know what the full picture is allows us to reproduce it.