Thursday, January 28, 12:10pm
Qualitative methods and open science: Building more trustworthy research, Lee Humphreys, Neil Lewis Jr, Katherine Sender and Andrea Stevenson Won
Recent initiatives towards open science in communication have
prompted vigorous debate. While gesturing to qualitative research, much
of open science does not engage with the constructionist research
paradigms from which many qualitative researchers draw (e.g. Dienlin et
al, 2020; one thoughtful exception is Haven & Von Grootel, 2019).
Nevertheless, shared standards and criteria exist for conducting
trustworthy qualitative research (e.g. Lincoln & Guba, 1985). In
this presentation, we draw on qualitative and interpretive research
methods to expand the key priorities that the open science framework
addresses, namely producing trustworthy and quality research.
Furthermore, we articulate a general set of principles that can
encompass a wide range of epistemologies and methodologies that foster
trust and intellectual expansiveness. Qualitative research has demanded
reflexive approaches to knowledge building (positionality, partial
knowledge, and attempts to offset implicit bias, for example, see Denzin
& Lincoln, 2000). Qualitative methods can help deductive scholars
embrace the contextual and the reflexive nature necessary for rigorous
and inclusive research (Davis, 2014; Sefa Dei, 2005). To be successful,
the open science movement will need to engage with the breadth of
epistemological, methodological, and ethical traditions that co-exist in
the social sciences. It will need to wrestle with the hierarchy of
knowledge production and the disparate impacts of that hierarchy in
scientific evaluation and rewards (Nosek, Spies, & Motyl, 2012). It
will also need to resist the pressure to endlessly publish (Nelson,
Simmons, & Simonsohn, 2012) novel and transformative studies (Davis,
1971), since that pressure hinders efforts to build cumulative
knowledge (Forscher, 1963; Lewis, 2020). We understand that these are
difficult challenges to address, but these issues that must be resolved
for research to be truly open and inclusive, now, and in the future.
OSF Meeting site where slides
are posted: https://osf.io/meetings/CDOD21/