Research Design & Methods (aos-methods)

When to trigger

• Choosing between field study, experiment, survey, or historical design for a settled question
• Negotiating field access, case selection, or interview/observation protocols
• Designing manipulations and participant pools for a behavioral experiment
• Ethics approval, informed consent, or site-anonymity commitments are still open
• A reviewer says the design cannot support the paper's interpretive or causal claims

Methodological pluralism, single standard

AOS accepts any method suited to studying accounting's social operation, and holds each to the rigor bar of its own tradition. The design must let the theoretical lens meet the empirical material on fair terms — enough depth for interpretation, enough control for causal process claims, enough sources for historical reconstruction.

Qualitative field study (the modal AOS design)

• Case logic. Justify the site theoretically: extreme, revelatory, or transparently typical for the phenomenon. "We had access" is a fact, not a rationale — convert access into an argument about what this site lets you see.
• Data plan. Triangulate interviews, observation, and internal documents; log counts, roles, durations, and periods as you go (reviewers will ask for a data-inventory table). Plan for prolonged or repeated engagement — one-shot interview rounds read as thin at AOS.
• Theory–data discipline. Follow the methodology the journal itself canonized: Ahrens & Chapman (2006) — the field problem, the theory, and the data must be positioned against each other continuously, not assembled at the end.
• Reflexivity and access terms. Record your own role at the site, what informants were promised (anonymity, review of quotes), and any sponsorship that could shape what you were shown.

Behavioral experiment

• Theorize the process first (see aos-theory-development); the manipulation must move the theorized construct and nothing else that plausibly moves the outcome.
• Choose the pool the inference needs — professional participants (auditors, managers, analysts) when expertise is the point; online panels only where the process is expertise-independent, with justification.
• Build in manipulation checks, attention screens, randomization, and a planned process measure (mediator) — AOS behavioral papers live or die on process evidence.
• Pre-specify exclusion rules and, where feasible, pre-register.

Survey and historical designs

• Survey: validated or carefully developed instruments; a defined frame and response-rate accounting; common-method-bias mitigation by design (separation, sources) before statistics.
• Historical/genealogical: name the archives, their custodians, and coverage gaps; treat documents as traces produced for purposes — source criticism is the identification strategy of historical work.

Ethics and anonymity (settle before collection)

• Human-participant work (interviews, experiments, surveys) needs institutional IRB/REB approval and documented informed consent; organize this before entering the field or the lab, and keep the paperwork — editors can ask.
• Field sites usually require pseudonyms and disguised identifying details; agree the terms with the organization in writing, and check that disguise does not destroy the theoretically relevant detail.
• Declare in the manuscript how consent and anonymity were handled; AOS review is double-anonymized, so scrub author-identifying access stories from the submitted files.

Checklist

• Design chosen because the question needs it; the inference each claim requires is stated
• (Field) case logic argued; data inventory planned; engagement duration adequate; reflexivity noted
• (Experiment) manipulation isolates the construct; pool justified; process measure and checks designed
• (Survey) instrument validity and method-bias mitigation designed in
• (Historical) archives named; source criticism planned
• IRB/REB approval and consent documented; site-anonymity terms agreed in writing

Anti-patterns

• Convenience ethnography: a handful of interviews at an accessible firm presented as a field study.
• Confounded manipulations that move attention or effort along with the theorized construct.
• Anonymity that erases the evidence — disguising the site so heavily the practices become uninterpretable.
• Ethics as afterthought: collecting first, seeking approval later.
• Method mimicry: dressing an interpretive study in hypothesis-testing scaffolding to look "rigorous."

Output format

【Design】qualitative-field / experiment / survey / historical / archival+theory
【Case or pool logic】why this site / these participants / these archives ...
【Data plan】sources, counts, periods, triangulation ...
【Process controls (if experimental)】manipulation, checks, mediator ...
【Ethics & anonymity】IRB/REB status, consent, site terms ...
【Next step】aos-data-analysis