Qualitative Transparency Deliberations

I.1. Ontological/Epistemological Priors
This working group will engage in a foundational discussion of how understandings of transparency (in the broad sense) turn on ontological and epistemological perspectives. How do different ontologies and epistemologies imply distinct logics of social inquiry and, in turn, different ways of sharing social knowledge and holding one another accountable for empirical or analytical claims? To what extent and how do the elements of research about which scholars should be transparent depend upon the epistemological and/or ontological perspectives they adopt? How are the benefits of being transparent understood from these differing philosophical perspectives? What are the limits or costs of pursuing greater transparency from different ontological/epistemological perspectives?

Marcus Kreuzer, Villanova University
Timothy Luke, Virginia Tech
Craig Parsons, University of Oregon
Antonio Y. Vázquez-Arroyo, Rutgers University
Moderators: Marcus Kreuzer, Tim Luke, CraigParsons

I.2. Research Ethics: Human Subjects and Research Openness
This Working Group is tasked with a wide-ranging consideration of how the pursuit of transparency (in the broad sense) should interface with ethical obligations to protect human research participants/subjects. It will consider questions such as: How is the relationship between transparency and research ethics shaped by the degree of power asymmetry between researcher and research participants, by the vulnerability of research participants within their own communities, and by the degree to which research participants put themselves or others at risk by taking part in the research project? How does data-sharing and other forms of transparency impact the broader communities within which scholars conduct their research? What are researchers’ ethical obligations to be transparent in their interactions with research participants, and how can such transparency be achieved?

Lauren MacLean, Indiana University
Elliot Posner, Case Western Reserve University
Susan Thomson, Colgate University
Elisabeth Wood, Yale University
Moderators: ElliotPosner, sthomson, ejwood, macleanl

I.3. Power and Institutions
Some initiatives for advancing transparency in the social sciences, such as DA-RT/JETS, take the form of rules to be developed and enforced by publishing gatekeepers (e.g., journal editors) in coordinated fashion. Other ways of collectively advancing openness could involve the articulation or elaboration of norms around certain research principles or practices, or pedagogical efforts focused on training the next generation of scholars. Greater sharing of information might also be advanced through capacity-building strategies that involve the expansion of resources and opportunities – such as through the creation of infrastructure (like the Qualitative Data Repository, technology for hyperlinked citations) or changes in editorial policies (e.g., on article word counts, on the publication of null findings, on the publication of non-hypothesis-testing work) that make greater transparency easier for qualitative scholars to achieve. Yet another possibility is to “let 100 flowers bloom”: to allow scholars and scholarly communities to work this out in a maximally decentralized fashion and to eschew broader institutional efforts to promote or support greater transparency.

This working group will consider the advantages and disadvantages of different ways of promoting transparency, including rules with centralized or decentralized enforcement, explicit standards accompanied by various incentives for norm-adoption, entirely voluntary norms, and capacity-building and pedagogy. For what kinds of challenges is each best suited? How do the costs and benefits of these different institutional forms differ? And in particular: How do different institutional modes for advancing transparency interact with power and resource differentials between scholars at different career stages, undertaking different kinds of work, or located at different kinds of educational institutions? Who should make judgments about trading off transparency against other intellectual, social, or ethical goals?

This WG will also consider the appropriate role of particular institutional actors – editors and reviewers, IRBs, funding agencies – in enforcing/promoting research openness, as well as the tradeoff between data dissemination and scholars' rights to "first use."

Rachel Riedl, Northwestern University
Ekrem Karakoç, Binghamton University
Tim Büthe, Duke University and Hochschule für Politik, Munich
Moderators: RachelRiedl, ekarakoc, TimButhe