A method to unlock hidden research expertise: making “failure” visible

On 4th May 2016 the author made a post on the ADRRN blog titled “Making research “failure” visible: unlocking hidden expertise”. She argued that “it would be enormously beneficial to our field if we joined forces to gather data about the research projects that we abandoned, the research methods that failed, and the results that we haven’t published because we don’t think they tell a “good enough” story.” Although there was a positive response to the ideas in the post, no researchers shared their stories of failure on the blog. The next step in this work in progress is the development of a research method that will facilitate the gathering of dispute resolution researcher’s stories of things that they have learnt by engaging in research projects. Of particular interest will be ideas that were abandoned due to anticipated blockages, projects that were designed but abandoned, completed research that was not published, and projects that failed to achieve the response rates or other outcomes that the researcher wanted. It is expected that many researchers have hidden knowledge, but that publicly sharing those stories would often be risky because of the ability to identify the organisations or individuals involved.