Robust Explanatory Research

Robust explanatory research combines the explanatory goal of identifying why and how variables causally influence one another with robust statistical methods that remain valid when data violate classical assumptions — particularly normality, homoscedasticity, and the absence of influential outliers. Rather than discarding outliers or forcing data to conform to ordinary least squares assumptions, this design applies estimators and inferential procedures that down-weight or resist the distorting influence of extreme observations while preserving the explanatory aim of the study.