Methodological Requirements on Empirical Research Papers

摘要

Although most research method textbooks provide very good coverage of key elements of empirical studies, but we still see many papers that are published with incomplete methodological information. In a recent seminar meeting with doctoral students, we found a paper published with no information about how the key dependent variable was measured (not even mentioning whether it’s binary or on an interval scale). Except for this missing information, the paper looks perfect, reasonable theories, adequate sample size, excellent model fits, PLS analysis with reasonable justification, significant of most hypotheses except a minor one. Unfortunately, without knowing how the dependent variable was measured, we could not assess whether the research method was appropriate; nor the meaning of the effect sizes in the structural equation model. Embarrassingly, I had to explain why this paper was accepted and published in a reasonably good journal with no reviewer paid attention to the measurement of the dependent variable. In my own experience, there are quite a few other problems such as missing sample size, mismatch between tables and associated texts, etc.. These occur not only in low quality journal papers.