This study explores how researchers’ analytical choices affect the reliability of scientific findings. Most discussions of reliability problems in science focus on systematic biases. We broaden the lens to emphasize the idiosyncrasy of conscious and unconscious decisions that researchers make during data analysis. We coordinated 161 researchers in 73 research teams and observed their research decisions as they used the same data to independently test the same prominent social science hypothesis: that greater immigration reduces support for social policies among the public. In this typical case of social science research, research teams reported both widely diverging numerical findings and substantive conclusions despite identical start conditions. Researchers’ expertise, prior beliefs, and expectations barely predict the wide variation in research outcomes. More than 95% of the total variance in numerical results remains unexplained even after qualitative coding of all identifiable decisions in each team’s workflow. This reveals a universe of uncertainty that remains hidden when considering a single study in isolation. The idiosyncratic nature of how researchers’ results and conclusions varied is a previously underappreciated explanation for why many scientific hypotheses remain contested. These results call for greater epistemic humility and clarity in reporting scientific findings.

Educational tracking affects both the trajectories and the composition of peers that students meet in school. This study compares the effect of significant others on students’ educational aspirations within two transition regimes: the more comprehensive Swedish system and the more stratified Dutch. Separating between doxic and habituated aspirations, I hypothesize that (1) aspirations among students in disadvantaged schools will be lower in the Netherlands than in Sweden; (2) the higher educational aspirations of girls and children of immigrants will disappear when significant others are controlled for; and (3) the positive effect of significant others is more marked among Swedish students than among Dutch due to greater student heterogeneity. The data comes from 3202 students in schools with low average grades in Sweden and the Netherlands. Results were in line with the hypothesis with one important exception. There was a marked difference in habituated aspirations but no difference in doxic aspirations between the Dutch and Swedish students. In conclusion, the findings suggest a) that early tracking systems creates a disconnect between students’ hopes and what they perceive as likely outcomes, and b) that the phenomenon termed “immigrant optimism” and “ethnic capital” reflects unequal access to social capital.

In this article, we study whether social capital contributes to ethnic inequality in education or whether there is evidence of counter-stratification. We use data from three surveys of Swedish ninth-graders in different contexts to fit regression models for access to social capital and educational returns. Our results show that students with parents from Asia or Southeast Europe had equal or better access to social capital, compared to children with at least one parent born in Sweden. Results for children with African background were mixed. Regarding educational outcomes, we found similar rates of returns from social capital across groups. Better access to social capital thus seems to buffer against disadvantages for some, but not all, groups.

High aspirations can be an important factor for educational attainment, especially for youth in disadvantaged schools who are otherwise more likely to leave school early. In this article, I study the relationships between pre-migration status, social capital, and educational aspirations among youth in disadvantaged Swedish schools, using data on 960 students collected in 2014. Regression results showed that access to social capital was related to pre-migration status, and that both factors contributed to high university aspirations among children of immigrants, partly through high expectations from parents. The findings consequently show how post-migration resources and outcomes relate to pre-migration factors, challenging the destination country bias that is often present in studies on immigrants and their children.

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