Research Design (amanthro-research-design)
AA accepts many methodologies but is demanding about each. The design must credibly connect the
argument (amanthro-theory-building) to evidence — and at AA, ethnographic and qualitative inference
is first-class, not a soft substitute for statistics. This skill is mode-aware: pick the section that
matches your work and defend it against the strongest alternative reading, reflexively and ethically.
When to trigger
- Specifying fieldwork, sampling of sites/interlocutors, archive or material selection, or lab design
- A reviewer questioned your evidence, generalization, confound, or interpretive leap
- Planning consent, anonymization, and community accountability into the design
- Justifying why your evidence adjudicates the rival reading from
amanthro-literature-positioning
Ethnographic / qualitative (first-class at AA)
-
Fieldwork design. State the site(s), duration, language(s) of work, and your access — and how
each shaped what was observable. Participant observation is a method with a logic, not just "being
there"; say what kinds of evidence it generates.
-
Sampling of cases/interlocutors justified by design logic (typical, deviant, contrastive,
theoretically driven), not convenience. Say what the case is a case of.
-
Triangulation & disconfirmation. Corroborate across observation, interviews, documents, and
material; state what evidence would have disconfirmed the reading (the qualitative analogue of a
falsification test).
-
Reflexivity. Your positionality is part of the design's validity — name how it bears on access
and interpretation (see
amanthro-theory-building).
Archival / material analysis
- Justify the archive or assemblage selected, its silences and biases, and how you read against the
grain. For archaeology: provenience, sampling, dating logic, comparative frames, and taphonomic
caveats.
Biological / physical anthropology (quantitative/lab)
- State the estimand or comparison, sampling frame, measurement protocol, and replication.
- Report power/sample adequacy; pre-register where appropriate; address batch/lab effects, ancestry
vs. social-race conflation, and ethical sourcing of skeletal/genetic/biological samples
(see
amanthro-transparency-and-data for repatriation and consent).
Multimodal / participatory design
- If image/sound/film is evidence, design capture and consent for media from the start; participatory
and collaborative designs name how community partners shaped questions and authority over outputs.
The adjudication test (AA-specific)
For the single strongest rival reading, write one sentence: "If the rival account were right
rather than mine, the evidence would look like ___; instead it looks like ___." If you cannot, the
design does not yet identify the contribution — regardless of how rich the material is.
Anti-patterns
- "Being there" treated as self-justifying — participant observation without a stated evidentiary logic
- Convenience site/interlocutor selection dressed up as theory-driven
- Causal or generalizing language an ethnographic design cannot support (and vice versa: dismissing
qualitative evidence as merely anecdotal)
- Biological "race" treated as a natural kind; ancestry conflated with social race
- Consent, anonymization, or heritage obligations left out of the design (see
amanthro-transparency-and-data)
- A design that cannot distinguish your reading from the leading alternative
Output format
【Mode】ethnographic / archival-material / biological-quant / multimodal-participatory
【Evidence base】sites/interlocutors/assemblage/sample + how selected
【Key assumption(s)】and how each is defended (incl. reflexivity)
【Rival ruled out】the adjudication sentence
【Disconfirmation】what would have shown you wrong
【Ethics designed in】consent / anonymization / accountability flagged? [Y/N]
【Next】amanthro-data-analysis
Supplementary resources
