RAT-RS: a reporting standard for improving the documentation of data use in agent-based modelling

Abstract

This article describes and justifies a reporting standard to improve data use documentation in Agent-Based Modelling. Following the development of reporting standards for models themselves, empirical modelling has now developed to the point where these standards need to take equally effective account of data use (which previously has tended to be an afterthought to model description). It is particularly important that a standard should allow the reporting of the different uses to which data may be put (specification, calibration and validation), but also that it should be compatible with the integration of different kinds of data (for example, survey, ethnographic and experimental) sometimes known as mixed methods research. The article motivates the need for standards generally, and positions the distinctive contribution of the RAT-RS reporting standard. It describes how the standard was developed to ensure its usability, presents and explains it, and describes possibilities for future development.