Reproducible Research in Epidemiology: Why and How

Session Chair: Sam Harper, McGill University

Generating transparent and reproducible research is both ethical and necessary for making epidemiologic science useful. This workshop will provide participants with an overview of the rationale for why funders of epidemiologic research, and investigators and students of epidemiologic studies should aim to make their research transparent and fully reproducible, as well as hands-on experience with a selection of tools needed to do so. The workshop will provide: 1) an introductory, high-level overview of what it means to engage in reproducible research; 2) guidance on how to create a management plan for a research project and a structured workspace for the project that facilitates a reproducible workflow; 3) a discussion of pre-registration and pre-analysis plans for both experimental and observational research designs; 4) an introduction to version control and dynamic documents; and 5) tools and guidance for how to ethically and responsible share the outputs of a research project, including data, code, and research reports. The format for the workshop will be a combination of short lecture material, collaborative group work, as well as hands-on exercises. The workshop will be conducted using both R and Stata, but will focus on general practices and core principles that can be adapted to any software platform. The aim is for participants to leave with a strong grasp of why and how to use transparent and reproducible practices throughout the research life cycle.