The role of plausible rivalexplanations

The strengths of design-based research (DBR from now on) is that it teststheories in the real word of practice and in doing so generates newknowledge and artifacts useful to both the scientist and the practitioner.However, DBR’s strength might also be considered its weakness; becausethe research takes place in real-life settings, controlling for theinnumerable confounding variables is impossible. This means that theknowledge claims made on the basis of the research need to beunderstood not as a causal explanation, but rather as a plausibleinterpretation. This chapter looks at the concept of plausible rivalexplanations as a way to help design-based researchers to understandhow their knowledge claims can be better warranted by incorporating rivalexplanations into their research.