Research Toolkit
Lessons learnt hard, written down. One technique among several — developed for mechanism-based empirical work in the organizational social sciences, and offered take-it-or-leave-it.
Research Toolkit
Lessons learnt hard, written down. One technique among several — developed for mechanism-based empirical work in the organizational social sciences, and offered take-it-or-leave-it.
Seven frameworks carry the whole toolkit. Everything on the three pages below is one of these, applied to a phase of the work.
The Three-Story Approach
Three theoretically motivated, mechanism-specific accounts before you may claim evidence for one. The world is equifinal; one story cannot be confirmed and two collapses into a straw man.
Coleman’s Boat
Macro condition down to individual situation, across to action, and back up to the outcome. The trip is the explanation; the top arrow is only the correlation.
Elster’s Diagram
A hypothesis earns belief by generating implications that are observed — and rivals lose it by generating implications that are not. Cogs and wheels, not covering laws.
The Aspirational Abstract
Write it first and aspirationally, as the paper you wish you had. Its job is not to describe the project but to decide whether the project deserves your time — and to let weak ideas die cheaply.
Possible → Plausible → Probable
Belief updates in increments. Establish the phenomenon, affirm and deny priors, then earn each step toward the preferred account. No step skipped.
Empirical Etiquette
Selection, attrition, naturalness, scaling. Justify the context as a strategic asset, and name the threats to inference before a reviewer does.
Differences in Inferences
Three models — the prior result, the novel result, the reconciliation. The interaction is where the mechanism lives, and the reconciliation is the contribution.