Day 1

1. Welcome & Introduction
2. Generals Aims & Preview
   • Day 1 Program
   • Learning objectives
3. Empirical Research
   • Preamble: An Arts and Humanities Approach to Empirical Method
   • Types of knowledge
   • Seven big ideas
     1. Motivated by truth, with no hope of proof.
     2. The best research invites failure.
     3. We invite failure by testing predictions.
   • A line in the sand
     4. We recognize failure by drawing a line in the sand.
   • Refutation is easier than confirmation
     5. Aim not to be right, but to be not not right.
   • Operationalizing
     6. Test hypotheses by operationalizing terms.
     7. Operationalize, but don’t essentialize.
   • Comparison
     8. Compare, compare, compare. Randomized Control Studies - The Case of Microfinance
   • The rhetoric of science (video - 8 minutes)
     9. The rhetoric of science is the rhetoric of prophecy. “Science is a narrative activity, conducted by a community of scholars who hold each other to a methodological commitment to making and testing predictions.”
   • Review the first 9 slogans: Quiz #1
   • Group Task #1: What’s worth knowing? An audience with God
   • Questions, conjectures, hypotheses and theories
   • Group Task #2: Question, theory or hypothesis? (Answers)
   • Grandmother research
   • The quantitative/measurement obsession
   • Group Task #3a: Obvious theories - Part 1
   • Group Task #3b: Obvious theories - Part 2
   • (Group Task #3 Debriefing) Obvious theories: Hindsight bias
     10. Hindsight is 20/20.
   • Grandmother research revisited
   • Two forms of reductionism
     11. In research, reductionism is a method, not a belief.
     12. Don’t try to explain the whole world at once.
   • Epistephobia
   • Types of failure (powerpoint presentation #3)
   • Review (first 12) slogans
4. Types of Empirical Studies
   • Types of empirical studies (powerpoint presentation #5)
   • Group Task #4: Types of studies (Answers/Discussion)
   • Generalizing versus universalizing (video - 10 minutes)
     13. Generalize, but don’t universalize.
   • Exploratory studies
   • Measurement studies
   • Hypothesislessness
     14. Avoid chronic hypothesislessness.
   • Group Task #5: Operationalize the following hypotheses
   • Syncopation: From question to hypothesis
   • Opinions as operationalizations
   • Double use data
     15. Beware of the post-hoc theory.
   • Exploratory & Confirmatory: Contexts of discovery and legitimation (lecture)
   • Explore-then-test Approach
   • Explore-then-test example - Part 1 (Have a participant read the text aloud. What kind of study is this? What should happen next?)
   • Explore-then-test example - Part 2 (Have another participant read the text aloud. Why make use of a robot rather than a human?)
   • From question … to protocol.
     16. From question to theory to conjecture to hypothesis to protocol
   • Quiz #2 (Answers)
   • Review (first 16) slogans
   • Feedback Day 1
5. Homework
   • Homework 1: Reading: Preamble: An Arts and Humanities Approach to Empirical Method Homework 2: Reading Guide #1: Lancashire & Hirst (2009)
   • Reading #1: Lancashire & Hirst (2009)
   • Homework 3: Individual Task #6: From question to theory