Date: October 1st, 2018
Source: LSE Impact Blog
Authors: Rik Peels & Lex Bouter

Replication is both possible and desirable in the humanities, just as it is in the sciences

Some scholars have claimed that replication – the independent repetition of an earlier study, answering the same study question, using the same or similar methods under the same or similar circumstances – is not possible in the humanities. The reasoning is that the humanities search for cultural meaning can yield multiple valid answers, and that research objects are people and thus interactive entities. This may be true, suggest Rik Peels and Lex M. Bouter, but it does not automatically follow that replication is not possible. It is a desirable feature for empirical studies in the humanities to be replicable, and it is equally desirable that the project of carrying out replication studies in the humanities gets off the ground.

Read the full article here.