Ex Post Replication and Ex Ante Documentation: Two Sides of a Coin
Richard Ball and Norm Medeiros, Project TIER ā September 15, 2022
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Session 2 of the Webinar series: Replicating empirical studies in economics - an opportunity for students
Registration was possible here for the live question & answer session on September 15, 2022, 18h Brussels/Paris/Berlin time.
Two recorded video presentations were available to view before the live discussion on September 15. They are available here and the part on the Open Science Framework (OSF) here or alternatively on OSF together with the slides. Use the discussion page to comment or ask questions in written form. Recordings of the live session are available to watch or listen.
Richard Ball & Norm Medeiros, Project Teaching Integrity in Empirical Research (TIER) (Haverford College)
Abstract
We will begin by drawing a distinction between two distinct, but complementary, activities: ex post replication and ex ante documentation.
Ex post replication refers to reproduction by an independent investigator of empirical results reported by a researcher in a previous publication. This notion of ex post reproduction corresponds to one of the types of replication that this symposium is focused on.
Ex ante documentation refers to materialsādata, code, and various forms of supplementary informationāthat are assembled by the original researchers who conduct a study, and posted publicly with the paper or report in which they present their results. This documentation should contain everything necessary to enable an interested reader to reproduce the results of the study, easily and exactly. The āreplication filesā that many journals now require authors of quantitative articles to submit are examples of ex ante documentation.
We will then give an overview of Project TIER, an initiative that promotes incorporating instruction in transparent and reproducible methods in the research training of undergraduate and graduate students in quantitative disciplines. The focus of Project TIER has been on ex ante documentation.
We will highlight the complementarities between teaching ex ante documentation and ex post reproduction. The central message:
Conducting an ex post reproduction of a previously published study is excellent preparation for students who will be constructing ex ante documentation for an empirical project of their own.
Constructing ex ante documentation for an empirical project of their own is excellent preparation for students who will be conducting an ex post reproduction of a previously published study.
Presenter bios
Richard Ball is Professor of Economics, and Norm Medeiros is Associate Librarian, both at Haverford College. Ball and Medeiros have been Co-Directors of Project TIER since they founded the initiative in 2013.
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