Transparency and Replication in Brazilian Political Science: A First Look

Abstract

We provide the first replication study of political science research published in Brazil by attempting to replicate every quantitative article published in five major Brazilian journals between 2012 and 2016. We also tested whether replication rates varied between established fields, more traditional and where the use of quantitative data is more common, and emerging fields. Our results show that transparency and reproduction are still in a development stage in Brazilian Political Science. Of the 650 articles reviewed, we asked for data to 197 quantitative articles. From those, only 28% agreed to share datasets and computed codes. We were able to attempt a replication for only 14%, and successfully reproduce the results of less than 5%. We conclude by suggesting the adoption of transparency and replicability procedures that are standard in other scientific communities.

Promoting Reproducibility and Replicability in Political Science

“…When attempting to reproduce published results, researchers often face roadblocks (Colliard, 2021). Published assessment studies generally report reproducibility rates below 50%, and sometimes the success rate is single-digit (Avelino et al, 2021; Gertler Galiani and Romero, 2018; McCullough et al, 2006). This may be due to the data not being publicly available because of their nature: administrative, proprietary, and/or copyrighted data (Christensen and Miguel 2018).…”