Don't forget to get your #SPSA2026 proposals submitted today! The deadline is today. It's January 14-17, 2026, in New Orleans. And it's always a great time. spsa.net/annual-meeti...

This paper (and its working versions before it) have probably done more to reorient my thinking about design than anything else I've read. Just really critical work for political science to think about in any type of hypothesis testing environment. Well done to this team.

I'm chairing methods this year. I'm looking forward to putting together some great panels. Submit your papers! Deadline is Sept. 15!

I'm chairing methods this year. I'm looking forward to putting together some great panels. Submit your papers! Deadline is Sept. 15!

𝘈 𝘖𝘯𝘦-𝘗𝘢𝘨𝘦 𝘗𝘳𝘪𝘮𝘦𝘳 𝘰𝘯 Statistical Power www.carlislerainey.com/blog/2025-08...

Excellent reference for those, like me, who can always benefit from a refresher on statistical power

New Post: "For Your Syllabus: Statistical Power" Add content on statistical power to your social science courses. Not just to methods courses. For substantive courses, Bloom's MDE (i.e., 80% power to detect 2.5*SE) is easy to teach and really helpful! www.carlislerainey.com/blog/2025-08...

New Post: "For Your Syllabus: Statistical Power" Add content on statistical power to your social science courses. Not just to methods courses. For substantive courses, Bloom's MDE (i.e., 80% power to detect 2.5*SE) is easy to teach and really helpful! www.carlislerainey.com/blog/2025-08...

‼️Cool new paper‼️ Finds that journal data policies in psychology boost sharing statements to ~100%, but only about half of datasets are complete, understandable, reusable. Open: open.lnu.se/index.php/me...

An old boss once told me “each sentence should carry one idea and one idea only.” Good, Strunk and White-esque advice.

What’s the single best piece of feedback you’ve ever received on your writing—something that stuck with you and shaped how you write future papers?

I’d say pose a question to the class, ask students to brainstorm as individuals for 1 minute, discuss in groups of 3 for 3-5 minutes, and then discuss as a whole class.

Assign students to ask class-related questions and grade them on the quality/depth of those questions. Provide the feedback and use the questions to help shape what you do in the classroom. Hard to scale above 35-40 students, but has been super helpful to me.

1. We have a tendency to make things easier for students these days, but the more you demand, the more you will get back from the students (on average). 2. There is no teaching style that is best. Find what works for you and improve it over time.

1- Use real world examples. 2- Unpopular opinion: done in moderation, edutainment is not a bad approach. It breaks monotony and maintains engagement.

1. Increasing the number of assigned readings typically has little if any relationship to the extent of reading that will happen, so focus on interesting assignments if you want to add to the course expectations. 2. Don’t be afraid to say “I don’t know but I’ll look into it.”

Every single time, ask yourself what is the point of THIS talk to THIS audience, and then do something with the answer

Let's talk about teaching. Suppose you must give a room full of professors one piece of actionable advice to improve their teaching. What advice would you give? Could be about lectures, activities, assignments, policies, etc. Rules 1. Quote w/ your advice 2. Bonus for unpopular opinions

𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐣𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 In the social sciences, we over-value causal inference. As a result, we have an imbalance of evidence: ① too many good estimates of irrelevant causal effects ② too little good description of the world

Are s-values better than p-values?

Top 15 ggplot2 extensions, by downloads during the last month. Some surprises here, at least for me. #rstats Code: gist.github.com/carl...

“Does Threat Cause Increases in Conservatism? Evidence from Three Large Experiments in the United States Says No” From Abigail Cassario, Mark Brandt, and Aymin Triki PsyArXiv Preprint: doi.org/10.31234/osf...

I just updated my post on equivalence testing with {marginaleffects} so that it's consistent with the latest version. (Some of the notes and code were outdated.) www.carlislerainey.com/blog/2023-08...

Regular Reminder Please don’t interpret a “statistically insignificant” variable (i.e., p > 0.05) as having “no effect.” Instead, check whether the 90% CI excludes all meaningful effects. Journal: onlinelibrary.wiley.... PDF: www.carlislerainey.c...

“The pivot penalty in research” This paper claims that when scientists switch research topics, their new work usually gets less attention, is less likely to be published, and has lower real-world impact. Journal: www.nature.com/artic...

Regular Reminder Please don’t interpret a “statistically insignificant” variable (i.e., p > 0.05) as having “no effect.” Instead, check whether the 90% CI excludes all meaningful effects. Journal: onlinelibrary.wiley.... PDF: www.carlislerainey.c...

"Improving the Teaching of Applied Statistics: Putting the Data Back into Data Analysis" from Singer and Willet jstor: www.jstor.org/stable... 👇good👍 1️⃣real data 2️⃣context info 3️⃣interesting 4️⃣teaches something real 5️⃣allows many methods 6️⃣raw 7️⃣case ID

"What Good is a Regression? Inference to the Best Explanation and the Practice of Political Science Research" from Spirling and Stewart journal: doi.org/10.1086/734280

"The value of preregistration for psychological science: A conceptual analysis" from Lakens paper: www.jstage.jst.go.jp...

"Preregistration does not improve the transparent evaluation of severity in Popper’s philosophy of science or when deviations are allowed" preprint: osf.io/preprints/met...

"Social media consensus paper causes social media uproar" link: www.science.org/cont... original paper: osf.io/preprints/psy...

new preprint "On the Foundations of the Design-Based Approach" from Aronow, Jang, and Offer-Westort

From Weingast's essay "Caltech Rules": "Papers must focus on one main point. Do not attempt to enrich your paper with many asides... It is far better to have a narrow, focused, and useful paper than a rich one that is ignored." Link to essay: weingast.people.stan...

From Weingast's essay "Caltech Rules" "With rare exceptions, papers do not write themselves. Transforming a good idea into a good paper is a difficult process. A clear understanding of what each part of your paper must accomplish is essential to this process." Link to essay weingast.people.stan...

"So how do researchers proposing new hypotheses avoid the worst pitfalls of low-powered and over-generalized research?" Some thoughts from Aidan (@aidanmilliff.com). Post: aidanmilliff.com/post/meta-an...

Zack Elkins (@zachelkins.bsky.social) compiled a wonderful collection of perspectives on academic writing (esp. as a political scientists). I use it often. His page: sites.google.com/site/zachelk... I made a backup here as well, so nothing is lost: github.com/carlislerain...

Currently in FirstView: In “The Limits (and Strengths) of Single-Topic Experiments,” @scottclifford.bsky.social & @carlislerainey.bsky.social examine the generalizability of single-topic studies, focusing on how often confidence intervals capture treatment effects from a larger population of studies

I'm heading the Methodology section for #SPSA2026 Jan 14-17 in New Orleans. I want to recruit an awesome set of papers and panels. The deadline is Sep 1, but think about coming to New Orleans, realize you can't miss this opportunity, and put it on the calendar right now.

Theorizing as Problem-Solving “We provide a practical tool for developing research programs in a recursive five-phase approach…” New article by Bhardwaj and colleagues: www.researchgate.net/profile/Akhi...

Data and Code Availability in Political Science Publications from 1995 to 2022 feat @carlislerainey.bsky.social #MetaScience doi.org/10.1017/S104... Insightful descriptive analysis showing code and data availability increases exponentially. In absolute terms, availabilty is modest at best w 31% 1/

Paper by @carlislerainey.bsky.social @harleyroe.bsky.social Qing Wang and Hao Zhou shows increase of data and code availability in polsci from 1995 to 2022 has reached 31%. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Also, this new paper came out since the last time I was posting about this. Worth a read. www.cambridge.org/core/journal... CC: @carolyneholmes.bsky.social, @mkguliford.bsky.social, @mjurkovich.bsky.social

New visualization tool alert! The vayr package version 1.0.0 is now on CRAN. It contains position adjustments for ggplot2 that help with overplotting in pleasing ways. My favorite is position_sunflower(). - install.packages("vayr") - alexandercoppock.com/vayr #rstats #ggplot2 #dataviz

What are your favorite papers that make descriptive claims (as opposed to causal claims)? I'm thinking of papers in the spirit of Gerring's "Mere Description." www.cambridge.org/core/journal... I put a couple of examples below. What else do you like?

This looks great --- earlier research on whether pre-post designs attenuate treatment effects was underpowered. This study finds modest attenuation.

Friends don't let friends run survey experiments that don't measure outcomes pre-treatment

@carlislerainey.bsky.social Rainey, Carlisle. "Arguing for a negligible effect." American Journal of Political Science 58, no. 4 (2014): 1083-1091. doi.org/10.1111/ajps...

Gave a talk to our PhD students today, and feeling appreciative of all the recent methods work on improving common practices. Thanks to all the authors who work to make their work accessible, especially on social media. A few articles we discussed: