Reflection of Malcomb et al. 2014 Reproduction
Link to the reproduction study
This was my second go-around with a reproduction study! Building off of my experience from my reproduction of Chakraborty et al. 2021 this reanalysis went a lot more smoothly. Working with the reproduction of “Vulnerability modeling for sub-Saharan Africa: An operationalized approach in Malawi” from Malcomb et al. 2014, I explored themes of research design validity and uncertainty that have stemmed from making subjective research decisions.
The original study constructs a deductively hierarchical vulnerability model using quantitative and qualitative data at the scale of Traditional Authorities, a small political zone based on local political decision-making power in Malawi. The reproduction notes how the original study is frequently ambiguous about its data transformations, making it difficult to accurately reproduce.
For my reanalysis, I improved a few aspects of the reproduction! Similar to my first reproduction study there were a couple of figures that needed fixing through improved color schemes, changing packages from ggplot2 to tmap for improved cohesiveness, and fixing legends and titles to improve the understandability of the reproduction study. I also rendered new figures such as a plot of the original figure 5 to be compared visually with the reproduced map. Most importantly, however, I improved the reproduction by offering an alternative geometric aggregation of the weighted vulnerability indicators to highlight areas of particularly high vulnerability. Lastly, I added a discussion section about the various areas of uncertainty and how the reproduction study was managing them if possible.
Ultimately, this reproduction study was the perfect complement to Chakraborty et al. 2021. It enabled me to build more confidence working in this environment while developing a deep understanding of vulnerability models and all of the uncertainty that can be inherent in a research design.