Reducing bias in secondary data analysis via an Explore and Confirm Analysis Workflow (ECAW): a proposal and survey of observational researchers
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background. Although preregistration can reduce researcher bias and increase transparency in primary research settings, it is less applicable to secondary data analysis. An alternative method that affords additional protection from researcher bias, which cannot be gained from conventional forms of preregistration alone, is an Explore and Confirm Analysis Workflow (ECAW). In this workflow, a data management organization initially provides access to only a subset of their dataset to researchers who request it. The researchers then prepare an analysis script based on the subset of data, upload the analysis script to a registry, and then receive access to the full dataset. ECAWs aim to achieve similar goals to preregistration, but make access to the full dataset contingent on compliance. The present survey aimed to garner information from the research community where ECAWs could be applied—employing the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) as a case example. Methods. We emailed a Web-based survey to researchers who had previously applied for access to ALSPAC's transgenerational observational dataset. Results. We received 103 responses, for a 9% response rate. The results suggest that—at least among our sample of respondents—ECAWs hold the potential to serve their intended purpose and appear relatively acceptable. For example, only 10% of respondents disagreed that ALSPAC should run a study on ECAWs (versus 55% who agreed). However, as many as 26% of respondents agreed that they would be less willing to use ALSPAC data if they were required to use an ECAW (versus 45% who disagreed). Conclusion. Our data and findings provide information for organizations and individuals interested in implementing ECAWs and related interventions. Preregistration . https://osf.io/g2fw5 Deviations from the preregistration are outlined in electronic supplementary material A.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.020 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.009 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".