Each research community has its own problems or topics of focus, epistemological foundations, and methods. Yet all researchers must address fundamental concerns: developing a focused research question or argument, conducting a literature review to situate their work, and upholding academic and scientific integrity. While these shared challenges shape all research, each methodological community also faces distinct pitfalls that stem from its approach to knowledge-making.

This article examines common methodological pitfalls within each research community, highlighting specific ways research often falls short.

Pitfalls: Creative Methods – The Creatives

• Excessive subjectivity – Allowing personal intuition or introspection to dominate, making it difficult for others to evaluate or engage with the work
• Overgeneralization from personal experience – Assuming that individual insights or emotions are universally applicable without sufficient contextual grounding
• Disregard for audience engagement – Failing to consider how a reader, viewer, or participant will experience and interpret the work

Pitfalls: Design Research Methods – The Designers

• Failure to listen and pivot – Overcommitting to an initial design idea instead of iterating based on user feedback and real-world testing
• Oversimplification of complex problems – Addressing surface-level issues while neglecting deeper systemic factors
• Inadequate justification for design choices – Making intuitive or aesthetic decisions without explaining their practical or theoretical basis
• Lack of interdisciplinary engagement – Designing in isolation without drawing insights from psychology, sociology, or empirical research
• Ethical and accessibility blind spots – Ignoring how different populations interact with a design, leading to exclusionary or biased outcomes

Pitfalls: Empirical Research Methods – The Empiricists

• Weak research questions – Asking overly broad or unfocused questions that fail to generate meaningful insights
• Overgeneralization of findings – Applying conclusions from small, context-specific studies too broadly
• Lack of transparency in data collection – Not clearly explaining participant recruitment, coding processes, or analytical frameworks
• Researcher bias – Allowing personal perspectives to shape data collection and analysis
• Limited engagement with counterarguments – Presenting findings without considering alternative interpretations or conflicting perspectives
• Poorly defined variables – Using imprecise or unreliable definitions for key concepts
• Inappropriate research design – Selecting methods (e.g., surveys instead of experiments) that fail to adequately answer the research question
• Misuse of statistical tests – Ignoring key assumptions (e.g., sample size, normality), leading to unreliable conclusions
• Unwarranted causal claims – Confusing correlation with causation, resulting in misleading findings
• Overreliance on statistical significance – Reporting p-values without considering practical significance or broader implications

Pitfalls: Mixed Methods Research – The Integrators

• Failure to integrate findings – Presenting qualitative and quantitative results separately instead of synthesizing them into a cohesive argument
• Sampling mismatches – Using large random samples for quantitative data but small purposive samples for qualitative, making alignment difficult
• Epistemological conflicts – Failing to reconcile objectivist and subjectivist perspectives within a single study
• Authority/validity imbalance – Overemphasizing one methodological component (often quantitative) while neglecting the other
• Data transformation problems – Reducing rich qualitative narratives to numerical codes, losing nuance, or forcing quantitative data into interpretive themes

Pitfalls: Scholarly Research Methods – The Scholars

• Failure to engage with counterarguments – Citing only sources that reinforce a given claim while ignoring conflicting perspectives
• Cherry-picking evidence – Selecting supporting texts while overlooking scholarship that complicates or challenges the argument
• Over-reliance on secondary sources – Depending on interpretations rather than engaging directly with primary materials
• Weak literature reviews – Reviewing sources without critically evaluating their relevance or credibility
• Citation inaccuracies and misrepresentations – Misquoting sources in ways that subtly alter meaning or distort arguments