Data Possibilities, Replication, and Transparency: Ready for the Challenges?

Session Submission Type: Virtual Roundtable

Session Description

In light of the conference theme "promoting pluralism," the methodological pluralism is arguably one of its most well-recognized dimensions. This roundtable aims to host sincere discussions on urgent issues and opportunities for research that arise from data possibilities, replication, and transparency - topics in which various issues around methodological pluralism tend to manifest. The topic is important not only for defining design requirements that ought to be considered by scientists in conducting analyses and generating scientific outputs. We must also acknowledge the fact that new data possibilities in recent years have been joined by various possibilities for data visualization, including new tools facilitating visualization. These developments have likely made our scientific activities and findings more apparent in political discussions happening in broader communities such as among policymakers and the general public. This tendency has further accelerated as we are increasingly supposed to collaborate and communicate more densely with parties outside of academia, such as industry actors and policymakers. Major research funding agencies have certainly favored such efforts for collaboration (in addition to interdisciplinary collaboration!) and encouraged researchers to increase the visibility of science in communication with “non-academic” audiences. Needless to say, we as political scientists are largely delighted to see those movements.

And yet, the heightened availability of data, analytical methods, and visualization possibilities have also led to common pitfalls related to the usage and interpretation. Once again, these challenges appear both in the academic and "non-academic" circle. To address these challenges within the scientific community, it is necessary to discuss, first, what it means to ensure methodological rigor in the context of newly emerging or rapidly evolving data possibilities, and second, what good practices look like in achieving such methodological rigor. Similar challenges emerge in the communication involving non-academic communities, be it among policymakers and citizens or between academic and non-academic circles. From the literature of politically motivated reasoning and more broadly of the science of science communication, political scientists and communication scholars have long known that both misinformation (inaccurate understanding of a neutral kind) and disinformation (false information that is spread deliberately) hinder a sound policy debate. Addressing these issues is certainly not easier when the world celebrates the (seemingly) increased ease of data usage, visualization, and interpretation that come along with expanding data possibilities. In this circumstance, political scientists cannot simply address the need for methodological rigor the same way they do among themselves in a comprehensible manner. So, what can we do about it? This will be the central question of the second theme of the roundtable.

This roundtable hosts discussions by taking examples from emerging and evolving data possibilities in content analysis, cross-national survey research, and measurement of apparent race and ethnicity. We believe that addressing the issue of transparency beyond the mere replication and data usage will allow us to have more meaningful discussions on how these changes will transform the way we conduct political science research and the way we, scientists, engage with the public by providing information that is relevant to important policy agendas.

Sub Unit

• Theme Panel

Chair

• Aya Kachi University of Basel

Presenters

• Amber Ellen Boydstun University of California, Davis

• David D. Laitin Stanford University

• Kazimierz M. Slomczynski Ohio State University

• Irina Tomescu-Dubrow

• Nicole Yadon Ohio State University