Open Science and Improving Credibility of Sociological Research (Session Endorsed by the European Academy of Sociology)

Thursday, 10 July 2025: 15:00-16:45
Location: FSE024 (Faculty of Education Sciences (FSE))
RC45 Rational Choice (host committee)

Language: English

Making sociology an open science with agreed upon standards for reproducibility and credibility is arguably a collective action problem. This session, organised in association with the European Academy of Sociology, invites contributions that explore methods to enhance the reproducibility and credibility of sociological or social science research. Key questions include: How much do papers withstand robustness checks? What conditions promote reproducibility? What are the risk factors for low reproducibility and robustness? How does theory building affect credibility of sociological research and empirical findings?
We welcome presentations of reproducibility audits, replication studies or theoretical contributions that investigate reproducibility and credibility in sociology and other social sciences. Contributions on practical journal policies are also welcome. For instance, is requiring open materials sufficient for high reproducibility rates, or is the presence of data editors reviewing code also necessary? Is it necessary to require pre-registration of hypotheses or analysis protocols before analysing data in experimental or observational research? Is it enough to review the code for reproducibility, or should institutions or the community also check for common coding errors or suspicious practices such as unjustified data removal (discarding outliers or experimental subjects), p-hacking, and pre-registration hacking (pre-registering and running many studies and publishing only those that match the pre-registered report)?
Session Organizer:
Ozan AKSOY, University College London, United Kingdom
Chair:
Ozan AKSOY, University College London, United Kingdom
Oral Presentations
Disclosing Hypotheses for a Badge: An Agent-Based Model of Preregistration
Luca GARZINO DEMO, USA; Eva VRIENS, Italian National Research Council, Italy; Luca TUMMOLINI, Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, Italy; Giulia ANDRIGHETTO, Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, Italy
Towards a Unified Framework for Robustness and Sensitivity
Pablo GERALDO BASTIAS, United Kingdom
Bias Induced By a Researcher’s Political Ideology in the Production of Research Findings
George J. BORJAS, Harvard University, USA; Nate BREZNAU, University of Bremen, Germany
The Value Foundation of Chatgpt
Peter KÖBLER, Friedrich Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany; Andreas DAMELANG, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany
See more of: RC45 Rational Choice
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