---
name: amanthro-research-design
description: Use when defending the research design of an American Anthropologist (AA) manuscript — fieldwork and participant observation, interview and archival design for ethnographic/qualitative work, material/contextual analysis for archaeology, and appropriate lab/quantitative design for biological anthropology. AA judges each mode on its own terms with reflexivity. Strengthens the design; it does not write code or run fieldwork.
---

# 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

- [`../../resources/external_tools.md`](../../resources/external_tools.md) — CAQDAS, archival tools, and lab/quant packages by subfield
- [`../../resources/official-source-map.md`](../../resources/official-source-map.md) — AA scope and ethics/transparency notes