Preregistering study designs is broadly supported as improving scientific credibility but criticized for limiting the scope of what can be learned. The paper investigates this tradeoff in a model where a researcher conducts a study and aims to …
Both within and outside of sociology, there are conversations about methods to reduce error and improve research quality—one such method is preregistration and its counterpart, registered reports. Preregistration is the process of detailing research …
Many view preregistration as a promising way to improve research credibility. However, scholars have argued that using pre-analysis plans in Experimental Economics has limited benefits. This paper argues that preregistration of studies is likely to …
This paper discusses two phenomena that threaten the credibility of scientific research and suggests an approach to limiting the extent of their use in advertising research. HARKing (hypothesizing after the results are known) refers to when …
The purpose of this paper is to help think through the advantages and costs of rigorous pre-specification of statistical analysis plans in economics. A pre-analysis plan pre-specifies in a precise way the analysis to be run before examining the data. …
Pre-analysis plans (PAPs) are a potential remedy to the publication of spurious findings in empirical research, but they have been criticized for their costs and for preventing valid discoveries. In this article, we analyze the costs and benefits of …
This article describes the current debate on the practice of preregistration in political science—that is, publicly releasing a research design before observing outcome data. The case in favor of preregistration maintains that it can restrain four …
Survey researchers take great care to measure respondents’ answers in an unbiased way; but, how successful are we as a field at remedying unintended and intended biases in our research? The validity of inferences drawn from studies has been found to …
We provide a novel articulation of the epistemic peril of p-hacking using three resources from philosophy: predictivism, Bayesian confirmation theory, and model selection theory. We defend a nuanced position on p-hacking: p-hacking is sometimes, but …
In this short article, I want to provide some of my thoughts on these developments from the perspective of someone who writes PAPs and reads them as a reviewer, as well as from the perspective of a journal editor.