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- What do we mean when we talk about reproducibility?
- What makes a good methods section? What makes research reproducible?
- How do these accessible methodologies help contribute to open scientific and scholarly discourse?
What is a replication study?
- Replication study: an independent study that repeats an earlier published study, using the same basic methodologies
- Exact replications : a replication study using existing data and similar research protocol
- Conceptual replications: a replication study in which new data is collected and analyzed using a revised research protocol, but carried out with the same research question in mind
What is a replication?
- Replication: An independent replication study is carried out, producing results that agree with those of the original study. Replication refers to the results.
- Replication comes in degrees
- A replication could aim to repeat a study as a whole, the inferences made as a result of the study, or simply the raw results.
- Ask yourself: what are they reproducing?
What is reproducibility (or replicability)?
- A study having certain characteristics that make it possible for independent researchers to conduct a replication study in order to verify inferences, data, or methodological choices.
- Sufficient transparency of data, methods, and inferences make this possible
Does reproducibility matter in the humanities?
- Replication is only possible if multiple instances of a topic can exist
- For example, a piece of literature is one possible instance of a particular technique, or genre category. Studying other pieces of literature to test a wider thesis about a technique or genre could be an example of a replication
- Studying the same thing multiple times generates new data
- For example, studying multiple artifacts from the French Revolution yields new data
- If research in the humanities involves empirical data, replication is possible
- For example, the hermeneutical method involves reading a text in order to extract data
- Adapted from: Peels, R. (2019). Replicability and replication in the humanities. Research Integrity and Peer Review, 4(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41073-018-0060-4
