Reporting all results efficiently: A RARE proposal to open up the file drawer

While the social sciences have made impressive progress in adopting transparent research practices that facilitate verification, replication, and reuse of materials, the problem of publication bias persists. Bias on the part of peer reviewers and journal editors, as well as the use of outdated research practices by authors, continues to skew literature toward statistically significant effects, many of which may be false positives. To mitigate this bias, we propose a framework to enable authors to report all results efficiently (RARE), with an initial focus on experimental and other prospective empirical social science research that utilizes public study registries. This framework depicts an integrated system that leverages the capacities of existing infrastructure in the form of public registries, institutional review boards, journals, and granting agencies, as well as investigators themselves, to efficiently incentivize full reporting and thereby, improve confidence in social science findings. In addition to increasing access to the results of scientific endeavors, a well-coordinated research ecosystem can prevent scholars from wasting time investigating the same questions in ways that have not worked in the past and reduce wasted funds on the part of granting agencies.

The Power of Beliefs

My commitment to combining normative concerns with empirical social science led, perhaps a bit counterintuitively, to early adoption of rational choice political economy. However, it was a modified form of rational choice that takes into account ethical and societal concerns. This was the approach I applied to considerations of compliance and consent with government, what makes a trustworthy government, the formation of legitimating beliefs, and finally the construction of an expanded and inclusive community of fate as a building block for a new moral political economy. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Political Science, Volume 25 is May 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

Conclusion

The Conclusion briefly recapitulates the main argument of the book, and discusses different possible avenues for challenging it. It also comments on how relational egalitarianism, and liberal relational egalitarianism in particular, can be fruitfully applied to policy and institutional questions beyond the ones addressed in the book, in collaboration with empirical social science, and identifies the questions and issues which have to be central for an extension of the theory to matters of international, transnational, global, and intergenerational justice.

Computational social science for nonprofit studies: Developing a toolbox and database for the field

How can computational social science (CSS) methods be applied in nonprofit and philanthropic studies? This paper summarizes and explains a range of relevant CSS methods, and highlights key applications in our field. Based on a typical design of empirical social science research, we define CSS as a set of computationally intensive empirical methods for data organization, concept representation, data analysis, and visualization. What makes the computational methods “social” is that the purpose of using these methods is to serve empirical social science research, such that theorization can have a solid ground. We illustrate the promise of CSS in our field by using it to construct the largest and most comprehensive database of scholarly references in our field so far, the Knowledge Infrastructure of Nonprofit and Philanthropic Studies (KINPS). Furthermore, we show that through the application of CSS in the analyses of the KINPS, our field’s knowledge and knowledge producing activities can be advanced, which is a core requisite for the development of our field as a discipline. We conclude the article with cautions for using CSS and suggestions for future research directions implementing CSS and the KINPS.

Tighter nets for smaller fishes: Mapping the development of statistical practices in consumer research between 2011 and 2018

Following vital discussion around the replicability of published findings, researchers demanded increased efforts to improve research practices in empirical social science. Consequentially, journals publishing consumer research implemented new measures to increase the replicability of published work. Nonetheless, no systematic empirical analysis on a large sample has investigated whether published consumer research has changed along with the discussion. To address this need, we surveyed three indicators for the replicability of published consumer research over time. We used text mining to quantify sample sizes, effect sizes, and the distribution of published p-values from a sample of N = 923 articles published between 2011 and 2018 in the Journal of Marketing Research, the Journal of Consumer Psychology, and the Journal of Consumer Research. To test the developments over time, we focused on a subsample of hand-coded articles and identified central hypothesis tests herein. Results show a trend toward increased sample sizes and decreased effect sizes across all three journals in the subset as well as the entire set of articles.

Concrete Ontology: Comments on Lauer, Little, and Lohse

I share with all the other authors the view that conceptual metaphysics without close ties to science is of minimal value, that this holds for much of current work on social ontology, and that if there is value in social ontology, it has to be in contributing to empirical social science. I do perhaps disagree with all three authors about making any blanket statements concerning either instrumentalism or realism about the social sciences and their ontologies. I argue and try to show instead that if there are fruitful questions of social ontology, they are probably mostly local empirical issues raised by specific pieces of social science. Certain kinds of pluralism and instrumentalism may well make sense in some situations. I illustrate with debates over the need for psychological realism and revealed preference theory in economics.

Towards an anticipatory public engagement methodology: deliberative experiments in the assembly of possible worlds using focus groups

Against the background of critique in public engagement scholarship on new and emerging science and innovation, this article engages with the methodological and conceptual challenges of making anticipatory knowledge. Adopting a science and technology studies perspective, a public engagement methodology is presented aimed at anticipating the kinds of possible and plausible worlds that novel science and technology bring into being. Drawing on six empirical social science research projects using focus groups, design criteria are explicated on context, framing, moderation, sampling, analysis and interpretation. A feature of the methodology lies in the assembly of emergent collectives and identities that are constituted to negotiate endogenously public meanings, concerns and priorities. I reflect on the potential of such processes to reconfigure dominant policy narratives, the role of the social scientist in mediating such processes and the politics of making anticipatory knowledge.

Der Hamburger Weg eines dialogischen Religionsunterrichts für alle. Partizipation aller?

The Hamburg way of a dialogical religious education for all, in which students with different religious and secular or non-religious positions take part, is presented in its emergence and development. The dynamic for such a singular approach in Germany, which has been in evidence since the mid-1990s, is characterised by innovative cooperation between religious communities, specialist institutes, the university, the Association of Religious Teachers and the school authorities. This approach was underpinned conceptually, consolidated by empirical social science research, concretized in curricula and supported in Hamburg's society and politics. For about 6 years now, work has been underway on further developing the curriculum, with advantages standing alongside problems.