Pre-analysis Plans and Study Registration in Social Science Research

This one-day meeting brought together a select group of researchers from across disciplines – including Economics, Political Science, Psychology and Statistics – to discuss the use of pre-analysis plans and study registries. The goal of the meeting was to understand the promise, as well as limitations, of recent developments in this area across different social science disciplines, and discuss possible ways forward.

This event was by invitation only.

Event Photos

https://www.flickr.com/photos/59053315@N06/sets/72157632219276866/

Program

8:30-9am: Coffee and breakfast

9-9:30am: Welcome, introductions and overview

Ted Miguel (UC Berkeley), Kevin Esterling (UC Riverside)

9:30-10:30am: The use of pre-analysis plans in Economics

Kate Casey (Stanford), Ben Olken (MIT)

Discussant: Arprajit Mahajan (UCLA)

10:30-10:45am: Coffee Break

10:45-11:45am: Pre-specification in Statistics and Clinical trials

Maya Petersen (U.C. Berkeley), Mark van der Laan (U.C. Berkeley)

Discussant: Bryan Graham (U.C. Berkeley)

11:45-12:45pm: Lunch

12:45-1:45pm: Trial registration in Political Science

Jeremy Weinstein (Stanford), David Laitin (Stanford)

Discussants: Kevin Esterling (U.C. Riverside), Don Green (Columbia)

1:45-2:45pm: Increasing research transparency in Psychology

Brian Nosek (University of Virginia), Leif Nelson (U.C. Berkeley)

Discussant: Gabe Lenz (U.C. Berkeley)

2:45-3:00pm: Coffee break

3:00-4:30pm: Action-oriented closing session: Discussion of unresolved issues, potential work products and registration platforms

Moderators (structured discussion): Kevin Esterling (U.C. Riverside), Ted Miguel (U.C. Berkeley), Carson Christiano (U.C. Berkeley)

4:30-5:30pm: Optional happy hour

Organizers

Kevin Esterling, UC Riverside Department of Political Science (kevin.esterling@ucr.edu)

Edward Miguel, UC Berkeley Department of Economics (emiguel@econ.berkeley.edu)

Contact

Jeanette Aguilar, UC Berkeley CEGA (jaguilar@berkeley.edu)

Meeting Resources

Kate Casey and Ted Miguel: Reshaping Institutions: Evidence on Aid Impacts using a Pre-analysis Plan

Alan Hubbard and Mark Van der Laan: Learning From Data

Ben Olken: J-PAL hypothesis registry website

David Laitin: Fisheries Management

Macartan Humphreys, Raul Sanchez de la Sierra, and Peter van der Windt: Fishing, Commitment, and Communication: A Proposal for Comprehensive Nonbinding Research Registration

Jeremy Weinstein: Draft Proposal for a PREPS

Participants

Angeli Kirk (UC Berkeley), Jeanette Aguilar (UC Berkeley), Jas Sekhon (UC Berkeley), Josh Cohen (Stanford; Apple), Joan Hicks (UC Berkeley), Elizabeth Bailey (UC Berkeley), Catherine Wolfram (UC Berkeley), Alan Gerber (Yale), Stuart Buck (Arnold Foundation), Lauren Falcao (UC Berkeley), Cari Tuna (Goodventures), Sibo Lu (Sloan Foundation), Colin Camerer (CalTech), David Broockman (UC Berkeley), Pierre Bachas (UC Berkeley), Simon Galle (UC Berkeley)

Jeremy Weinstein
Edward Miguel

Founder; Faculty Co-Director
Aprajit Mahajan

UC Berkeley
Katherine Casey
Kevin Esterling

UC Riverside
Kate Casey

Stanford
Ben Olken

MIT
Maya Petersen

UC Berkeley
Mark van der Laan

UC Berkeley
Bryan Graham

UC Berkeley
David Laitin

Stanford
Don Green

Columbia
Brian Nosek

University of Virginia
Leif Nelson

UC Berkeley
Gabe Lenz

UC Berkeley
Carson Christiano

UC Berkeley