Jais Methods

Research Design & Methods (jais-methods)

When to trigger

• You have a theory or design propositions but no defensible way to test or evaluate them
• The method may not match the claim (e.g., a causal claim resting on a cross-sectional correlation)
• A reviewer asks "how do you know the artifact works?" or "what identifies this effect?"
• You chose a method by habit/fashion rather than because the phenomenon demands it
• You are designing a Literature Review and need a transparent, reproducible review protocol

Pluralism is the point — but each method has its own bar

JAIS is explicitly "inclusive in… method and philosophical and research approach," so there is no mandated design. That freedom comes with a duty: justify the method by the phenomenon and the claim, and meet the rigor norms of that method's tradition. JAIS reviewers span paradigms, so a method chosen for convenience rather than fit is a recurring rejection. Pick the row your claim requires.

Let the philosophical stance pick the criteria

JAIS is inclusive of "philosophical and research approach," which means the method must declare its epistemology so reviewers apply the right standards. Positivist work is judged on validity, reliability, and identification; interpretive work on credibility, transferability, and the authenticity of the account; critical work on the reflexivity and the emancipatory or analytic insight; design-science work on artifact utility and the generalizability of design knowledge. Stating the stance up front pre-empts the frequent mismatch where a reviewer from a different paradigm grades the paper against criteria it never claimed to meet.

Behavioral: design out the threats before you collect

JAIS expects the measurement model to be defensible by design, not patched later. Build temporal/source/psychological separation against common-method bias, use validated scales (or justify new ones — but note construct development as the headline belongs in the Theory category), and include attention/manipulation checks. Plan to report the full measurement model and, for SEM, the correlation/covariance matrix the journal requires in an appendix.

Behavioral: prepare the JAIS-required measurement materials now

JAIS asks SEM studies to provide a full correlation/covariance matrix plus descriptives in an appendix, and to make the (anonymized) dataset available on request to Senior Editors and reviewers. Design these into the study from the start: pre-register or pre-specify scales, keep a clean codebook, and structure data collection so the matrix and descriptives fall out automatically. Retrofitting these materials at submission — or worse, at first revision — is where otherwise sound behavioral papers stumble against JAIS's transparency rules.

Economics of IS: anchor identification in real exogenous variation

Name the source of variation — a platform/policy change, a staggered rollout, a breach, a system go-live — and pre-commit the comparison and the assumptions you will defend. With staggered timing, plan a modern estimator (Callaway–Sant'Anna, Sun–Abraham) rather than naive TWFE, and the event-study and placebo evidence you will show. JAIS publishes econometric IS work, but the identification must be transparent enough for an SE to interrogate.

Design science: plan the evaluation up front

A JAIS design-science paper lives or dies on evaluation tied to design principles. Decide before building how you will demonstrate utility: held-out benchmarks against credible baselines, a controlled experiment or A/B field deployment, simulation, or expert evaluation — and connect each back to a design proposition. "We built it and it ran" is not an evaluation.

Design science: anchor in a recognized DSR tradition

A JAIS design-science paper should make its design-research logic legible: state the relevant problem, the kernel/justificatory theory behind the design choices, the generalizable design principles, and the evaluation that will test them. The artifact is the vehicle; the prescriptive, reusable design knowledge is the contribution — which is also why JAIS routes such work through its theory-forward lens rather than treating "we built a working system" as sufficient.

Qualitative/interpretive: make philosophical stance explicit

JAIS welcomes interpretive and critical work, so state your paradigm (positivist, interpretive, critical, design) and let it govern the criteria you invite reviewers to apply. Build a traceable chain from raw data to constructs and an audit trail; trustworthiness, not p-values, is the currency.