The Publisher: White Paper and Poster Studio

The last meeting

Studio session

• Two working blocks: the White Paper, then the poster
• Short input from me between them, and the rest of the time is yours
• I am circulating. Bring me the specific problem, not the general anxiety.
• What we build today is what you submit in finals week
• Leave with a rendered site, a poster layout, and a written reflection

Done, and not finished

• The study has a question, a theory, a reliability-tested codebook, a defensible sample, a clean dataset, three figures, and a tested finding
• Every hard part is behind you
• And all of it lives in pieces: a codebook here, an R script there, a folder of images, a test result that scrolled past in a console
• A study scattered across a dozen files is raw material for a study, not a study
• Today gives the work a form

A report that rebuilds itself

• The ordinary way: run the analysis, copy the numbers into a word processor, screenshot the figures, write prose around them
• It works, and it is quietly fragile
• Change one coding rule, add three hundred messages, and every pasted number is silently out of date, with nothing in the document saying so
• The alternative is to stop copying and put the analysis inside the document
• A Quarto document interleaves prose with code chunks of live R

Numbers you never type

The analysis dataset held `r nrow(analysis)` coded messages,
of which `r sum(!is.na(analysis$is_gaming))` carried a
gaming-status label.

In the rendered report those backtick expressions become the actual counts, so nothing in the sentence can fall out of date.

Figures you never paste

#| label: fig-msglen
#| echo: false
#| fig-cap: "Message length by channel type."

ggplot(msglen, aes(message_length, fill = is_gaming)) +
  geom_histogram(binwidth = 5) +
  v2v::theme_v2v()

Those eight lines sit inside an {r} chunk in the report itself, so the figure is produced at render time rather than pasted in.

Two payoffs that matter

• The report cannot drift from the analysis, because the report is the analysis
• The report can be checked: anyone with the source and the data renders it and gets exactly the same results (Peng, 2011)
• The idea predates Quarto and R. Knuth (1984) called it literate programming: runnable code and the prose explaining it belong in one document.
• The “one click” is the render button

IMRaD, and what each section owes

• Introduction: the question and why it is worth asking, which is your prospectus
• Methods: exactly what was done, in enough detail to be repeated. Codebook, sampling, reliability, wrangling.
• Results: what was found, plainly and without interpretation. Figures, means, the test statistic with df, p, and effect size.
• Discussion: what the results mean, plus the study’s honest limits
• An abstract in front, references at the back. The Hub ships imrad-template.qmd.

The white paper, specifically

• IMRaD structure, APA 7th edition throughout
• Effect sizes and power statistics reported, not just p-values
• A pre-registration disclosure in the Methods section
• The Discussion situates the finding in the theoretical literature you built earlier
• Converting your results into IMRaD costs you something. Ask what is lost in the move, and what has to be added to meet the standard.

Methods: three transparency markers

1. A data provenance statement: where the data came from and how
2. An intercoder reliability report: the coefficient, the training protocol, and the threshold you applied
3. The pre-registration disclosure, with its OSF URL

Each one signals to a reviewer that the study meets the evidentiary standard it claims. Anything you ran beyond the plan is labelled exploratory.

What preregistration is for

“Preregistration distinguishes analyses and outcomes that result from predictions from those that result from postdictions.”

Nosek et al. (2018, p. 2600)

• Not a promise of virtue: a way of making a distinction legible to a reader
• Draft your disclosure sentence today, list your deviations, and say how you report each one

Where the 200 points sit

Methods carries the most weight because it carries the transparency markers: the provenance statement, the reliability report, and the pre-registration disclosure. The full rubric is in the syllabus.

One site, many pages

project:
  type: website

website:
  title: "Twitch Chat Study"
  navbar:
    left:
      - text: "Report"
        href: index.qmd
      - text: "Codebook"
        href: codebook.qmd

_quarto.yml names the site and lists its pages, turning a folder of .qmd files into one navigable site rather than a pile of documents.

Studio block one

45 minutes · White Paper

• Open your portfolio and get index.qmd rendering, even if it is mostly headings
• Move your Results in first. It is the section you already have.
• Replace every pasted number with an inline r expression
• Replace every pasted figure with a chunk that produces it
• Then write the Discussion paragraph that reports both significance and size

Going live

v2v::deploy_portfolio()

Pre-flight checks
  renv library in sync ......... ok
  no uncommitted changes ....... ok
  _quarto.yml valid ............ ok

Rendering 4 pages ... done
Live at: https://username.github.io/twitch-chat-study/

The three pre-flight checks

• renv in sync: the site was built with the package versions the source declares
• No uncommitted changes: what went live matches the source that is actually saved
• _quarto.yml valid: the render will not fail partway through
• Each heads off a specific and demoralizing failure, the last one being a deployment that collapses at eleven at night the evening a portfolio is due
• The checks exist so that the last step of a long study is the calm one

The poster

• 36 by 24 inches, landscape orientation
• Title, authors, institution; an abstract of about 100 words
• Background and hypotheses; condensed methods
• Key results with one or two theme_v2v() figures
• Discussion and implications; a QR code to your pre-registration or portfolio

What earns space on a poster

• The poster is a ninety-second pitch, not a paper at a larger font size
• Decide which single figure communicates your main finding in thirty seconds, and give it the most space on the board
• Cut every sentence that exists to show effort rather than result
• Numbers survive, hedges do not. The effect size goes on the board.
• Your reader is standing up, holding a drink, and reading from four feet away

Studio block two

45 minutes · Poster

• Sketch the 36 by 24 layout on paper first, in blocks, before opening any software
• Place your chosen figure, then build the text around it
• Write the 100-word abstract last. It is easier once the blocks exist.
• Generate the QR code from the URL deploy_portfolio() gave you
• Read your title aloud. If it takes more than one breath, cut it.

Common failures in the last week

• Rendering on your machine and nowhere else, because renv drifted
• A figure that vanishes in the rendered site because the chunk depends on an object created in your console rather than in the document
• A poster exported at screen resolution and printed at 36 inches
• A QR code pointing at a private repository
• Test the whole chain today, on a machine that is not the one you built it on

The reflection

• One paragraph, and the portfolio is not complete without it
• Name what turned out harder than expected, where a coding rule proved ambiguous in practice, what the dataset could not answer because of how it was collected
• Resist both easy failures: the bland report that everything went well, and the anxious confession that everything went wrong
• A reflection is not an apology. It is evidence of judgment.
• One honest paragraph is worth more than a page of hedging.

Checkpoint before you leave

You should have:

• A portfolio site that renders locally with no errors
• A Results section with zero hand-typed numbers
• A published URL, and a QR code pointing at it
• A poster layout with its main figure chosen and placed
• The reflection paragraph drafted, even roughly

From vibes to variables

• A question became a design. A design became data. Data became figures and a test.
• The whole of it became a reproducible site another person can read, check, and extend
• The dataset happened to be Twitch chat. Nothing in the path depended on that.
• Vibes are where a study starts. Variables are what discipline turns them into.
• The distance between the two is the whole of research methods, and you have now walked it once.

Due in finals week

Final deadline

• The White Paper and its paired poster, submitted together, 200 points
• The published portfolio URL, live and public, submitted with them
• Your reflection paragraph included in the portfolio
• Your final journal entry
• My office hours run through finals week, and I would rather see a draft on Monday than a crisis on Friday. Bring it early.