project-design reflection-questions
"Quantitative research is typically guided by stated hypotheses, which may be written down before data collection and analysis begins. In qualitative research, researchers often do not work with clear hypotheses to be tested but instead enter the field in order to learn something about the practice in a particular social setting. They conduct self-reflection and state their assumptions as well as the effect of their presence in the research domain. These processes add accountability and transparency to the research process. In technical domains and data science, even though relying on massive amounts of data, it is also common for researchers to collect data over a period of time without a clear stated goal in order to find strong predictors, correlations or interesting cluster phenomena. We suggest that researchers who use AI systems in their research consider a hybrid of an ex ante hypothesis (still making room for exploration) as well as documenting actions taken and choices made throughout the process along with self-reflections on how this research practice has affected their findings and research questions.- How do the research questions or hypotheses affect and control the outcome? - If the researcher did not store a fixed hypothesis, 1) how has the researcher’s choices been documented? And 2) how has the researcher affected the outcome by choosing this practice (e.g. discussing the presence of proxies and spurious correlations)?” (franzke et al., 2020, p. 38)