We are hosting the first workshop from the series “Supporting a Positive Research Culture in Experimentation” funded by a UCD Research Culture ReCLAIM award. The workshop is organised by members of the BSP Group consisting of Diogo Geraldes, Margaret Samahita, Oana Peia, Marta Talevi, Yung-Shiang (Jasmine) Yang, Sinéad Flannery, Oscar Barrera-Rodríguez and Vessela Daskalova.

Workshop details:

  • When: 30 April 2025, 11am-3.30pm
  • Where: UCD Geary Institute Seminar Room
  • Registration: Please fill in this form by 22 April
  • For more info, please contact: vessela.daskalova@ucd.ie

Programme:

11:00-11:10 Opening Remarks Vessela Daskalova, UCD School of Economics

11:15-11:35 Orla Doyle, UCD School of Economics

11:35-11:55 Aditi Kharb, UCD School of Economics

12:00-12:10 Break

12:10-13:00 Roundtable Discussion with Sinéad Flannery, UCD School of Agriculture and Food Science (moderator), Emma Howard (TU Dublin), Margaret Samahita (UCD School of Economics), Tensay Meles (UCD School of Architecture, Planning & Environmental Policy)

13:00-14:00 Lunch

14:00-14:20 Lucie Martin, ESRI

14:20-14:40 Liam Kneafsey, TCD Department of Political Science

14:40-15:00 Coffee break

15:00-15:30 Lab experiment demonstration in BSP Lab B103 in Geary Institute with Yung-Shiang (Jasmine) Yang, UCD School of Economics

Project summary:

Experimentation is a crucial tool for research and collecting causal evidence in various fields such as economics, psychology, environmental science, agriculture, biology, medicine, and many others. Recent concerns about the trustworthiness and replicability of findings in various fields have highlighted that how we do experiments matters.

The goal of this proposal is to establish a positive and reflective research culture around experimentation. There are experts across different Schools in UCD for whom experimentation is an important part of research. However, we do not necessarily know much about the best practices of experimental researchers in other disciplines and often also of researchers using different types of experiments within a discipline (laboratory, field, online).

We will start a bottom-up discussion from an interdisciplinary group of researchers doing experimentation in order to support each other and learn from our experiences. The format will be through a series of 3 workshops in which we will discuss best practices for experimental research. The first two workshops will be UCD internal, the third one will feature invited speakers from abroad who are key figures from different disciplines in this debate. A positive and reflective research culture will raise questions around the role of pre-registration, replication, publication biases, ethics, pilot experiments, incentivization in experiments, interpretation of findings, reacting to challenges and learning from failures. A key objective of the proposal is to develop a positive and nurturing research environment for the next generation of researchers.