Reviewed before it begins
Any study involving people goes to the IFI Responsibility Board for independent ethical review before a single participant is contacted. No exceptions, including for our own convenience.
The research arm of Idea Fields Institute
IFI Research
Cross-disciplinary inquiry, conducted in the open — careful about people, honest about uncertainty, accountable to real conditions.
01Focus
Areas of inquiry.
Research here follows the Institute's four fields — human, technical, analog, digital — with particular attention to the places where they meet.
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Psychology & behavior
How people actually think, decide, cope, and change — studied under conditions that resemble life rather than the lab, with special interest in experience that resists clean measurement.
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People & machine intelligence
What happens when human judgment and AI systems share real work: trust, reliance, skill change, and the practical ethics of collaboration between people and models.
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Applied systems
Methods, tools, and infrastructure evaluated where they are used — including instruments and software built in-house for the Institute's own studies.
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Place, practice & material life
Work, land, maintenance, and the material conditions that shape everything else — the field questions that rarely make it into journals, asked seriously.
02Method
How the work is done.
Independence is not a license to cut corners. Every study under IFI Research follows the same commitments, regardless of size.
Stated intent, kept on record
Questions, hypotheses, and analysis plans are written down before data collection. When the plan changes — and plans change — the record shows the revision, not a quiet rewrite.
Data minimalism
We collect what the question requires and nothing more. Identifying information is separated from responses wherever possible, retained only as long as needed, and never sold or shared for unrelated purposes.
Mixed methods, honestly mixed
Quantitative where counting helps; qualitative where meaning does. Neither is treated as decoration for the other, and the limits of each are stated plainly in the findings.
Negative results count
A study that finds nothing — or finds the opposite of what we expected — gets written up with the same care as one that confirms a hunch. The file drawer stays open.
Published readably
Findings are written first for the people they concern, then for specialists. Every paper carries a plain-language summary alongside its abstract, and methods and instruments are shared so others can check, reuse, or improve the work.
03Papers
Working papers.
Published as they are finished, with the data and source alongside the PDF. Working papers have not yet been through external peer review — read them accordingly, and check the work. Most recent first.
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Is LLM Personality an Artifact of Deployment? Psychometric Stability of Big Five Self-Reports Across Quantization Levels
Administers the 50-item IPIP Big Five inventory to nine open-weight model variants across three quantization levels — 28,350 stateless calls — and finds that 4-bit quantization materially shifts “personality” scores, internal consistency fails everywhere, and answer-option formatting moves scores more than quantization does. Deployment configuration belongs in the methods section.
04Participate
For participants.
Research is a relationship, not an extraction. If you take part in a study here, these commitments are yours to hold us to.
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You will know what you are agreeing to.
Consent materials are written in plain language — what the study asks of you, what is recorded, and what becomes of it.
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You can leave at any time.
Withdrawal requires no reason and carries no penalty, and you may ask for your data to be removed.
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Your data is handled with restraint.
We collect the minimum, store it carefully, and report findings in ways that do not expose you.
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You will be able to see what came of it.
Findings are published readably and shared with participants first wherever possible.
05Contact