Confirmatory vs explanatory analysis

Confirmatory analyses refer to analyses that were set before data collection or examination, and that test whether a hypothesis is supported by the data. Exploratory analyses are carried out when some data have already been collected. They are useful for discovering patterns in that data or extending to new topics or subjects. They foster hypothesis development and refinement.

Preregistration often aims to clearly distinguish confirmatory from exploratory analyses. This is helpful because you won’t be able to convince yourself (or others) that you had hypotheses before you saw your data, when actually you added these ‘post-hoc’, after seeing the results.

If you are thinking of preregistering either type of research, here are some things to consider:

• Both quantitative and qualitative research can be confirmatory, and so preregistration for confirmatory research can be used for both.
• For exploratory research, preregistration can be a great way to document initial study plans, even if those later change through an iterative process.
• Preregistering exploratory studies can be useful for both quantitative and qualitative research, for all disciplines.
• If your discipline has another good way of keeping track of how study plans change over the course of the research, then this could also work well instead of preregistration.

  

It is important to distinguish between confirmatory and exploratory analysis so that results can be interpreted accordingly.