Tobias Heycke
GESIS – Leibniz-Institute for the Social Sciences
A call for comprehensive documentation of data collection procedures
Comprehensive documentation of the data collection procedure enables readers and reviewers to critically evaluate the study and researchers to conduct close replications. One possibility to document the procedure is to upload the material and experimental script. However, open material does not guarantee that the procedure can be critically assessed or the procedure reproduced. Experimental scripts might not run or are time-consuming to set up and material alone might not inform about important details. In two projects we aim to raise the quality of the data collection documentation: In one project, we encourage researchers to make a screen recording of studies administered at the computer and provide a tutorial of a screen recording software. In another project, we develop reporting guidelines, which can be used as checklists, for the data collection of survey research. I will additionally outline a number of new research ideas investigating the documentation of research methods.