A call for research designs that came in over the wires. This is an exceptional opportunity for researchers at the early phase of a project to strengthen their design:
Call for Research Designs
Conference on Field Experiments in International Relations
Experiments provide the best method for identifying causal effects in
social science, but they have been undersupplied in international
relations. To help fill this gap, we are convening a conference of
interested scholars to discuss research designs for field experiments in
transnational affairs. The conference will be held in Park City, Utah
September 21-22, 2012. After the conference, scholars will revise the
designs, execute the experiments, and then present their findings and
receive feedback at a follow up meeting to be held at Princeton University
in the fall of 2013.Rationale
Individuals, firms, non-governmental organizations, and international
bureaucrats play vital roles in the modern world. But unlike nation states
– which are difficult to manipulate either practically or ethically –
scholars can employ experiments with these non-state actors as subjects.Experiments’ strong internal validity makes them an especially attractive
research method for causal inference. Randomization permits the precise
estimation of causal effects because in expectation it balances not only
the observable factors that might confound results, but it also neutralizes
all unobservable confounds. This is a significant advantage over
observational research, which can never establish with certainty that the
model employed is properly specified.Field experiments add an additional improvement by addressing concerns over
external validity. The day-to-day international actions of non-state
actors and the effects of their behavior on global outcomes are worthy of
close study. Field experiments in IR – where non-state actors as subjects
represent the actual units of interest – likely can be better defended as
externally valid while retaining many of the internal-validity advantages
of lab experiments. Convening a significant group of scholars focused on
brainstorming research designs, refining plans, and analyzing results
should help international relations take an important step toward
uncovering causal effects in global affairs.Details
Helen Milner of Princeton University, along with Michael Findley and Daniel
Nielson of Brigham Young University, are organizing the conference.
Princeton’s Robert Keohane, Columbia’s Donald Green, Stanford’s Michael
Tomz and Jeremy Weinstein, Yale’s Susan Hyde, and Harvard’s Dustin Tingley
are also planning to attend. Interested scholars should submit an abstract
no longer than 500 words by March 15, 2012 to BYU’s Political Economy and
Development Lab at pedl@byu.edu.The initial conference will focus on research designs, not finished papers.
The abstracts should therefore articulate the research question,
hypotheses, and causal mechanisms along with the anticipated subject pool,
experimental conditions, outcome measures, and data analysis strategy. Both
collaborative and sole-authored projects are encouraged.Topics covering the full range of international and transnational relations
– including but not limited to political economy, security, environment,
and human rights – are welcome. Abstracts should address some aspect of
transboundary interactions and should be field experiments rather than
survey or laboratory studies, meaning that the subjects are the actual
objects of inquiry rather than proxies, the outcome of interest is
behavioral (not attitudinal), and the subjects’ actions are observed in a
natural setting.Princeton and BYU have made funds available to sponsor some – but not all –
of the conference participants. Please provide contact information with
your abstract, and also indicate whether or not your home institution can
pay for your airfare and lodging. Meals and ground transportation are
provided. Examples of field experiment designs in international relations
are available upon request.