Essays, notes, and research by Nariman Zhumabekov, a PhD student at Nazarbayev University.https://narimanzhumabekov.comhttps://narimanzhumabekov.com/board/#2026-09-08-preregistration-for-qualitative-workhttps://narimanzhumabekov.com/board/#2026-09-08-preregistration-for-qualitative-workSomeone at the seminar today argued that qualitative work should be preregistered like experiments. I keep turning this over. Preregistration exists to stop you claiming you predicted what you only noticed afterwards — but noticing afterwards is most of what interviewing is. The honest version…Tue, 08 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoardmethodhttps://narimanzhumabekov.com/board/#2026-09-02-the-survey-response-rate-problemhttps://narimanzhumabekov.com/board/#2026-09-02-the-survey-response-rate-problemResponse rates on general-population surveys have collapsed almost everywhere over thirty years, and the standard reassurance is that weighting fixes it. Weighting fixes the demographics you measured. It does nothing about the thing that made people answer in the first place, which is precisely…Wed, 02 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoardmethodsurveyshttps://narimanzhumabekov.com/board/#2026-08-27-seeing-like-a-state-second-timehttps://narimanzhumabekov.com/board/#2026-08-27-seeing-like-a-state-second-timeRereading Seeing Like a State after five years. The argument I remembered was "top-down planning fails." The argument that's actually there is narrower and better: legibility is a precondition for administration, and the act of making something legible destroys the local knowledge that made it…Thu, 27 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoardbookshttps://narimanzhumabekov.com/notes/how-this-site-workshttps://narimanzhumabekov.com/notes/how-this-site-worksA working note on the setup — Obsidian to GitHub to a live page, with no terminal involved.Tue, 25 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTNotesmetahttps://narimanzhumabekov.com/essays/writing-as-thinking-in-publichttps://narimanzhumabekov.com/essays/writing-as-thinking-in-publicWhy I decided to publish unfinished ideas instead of waiting for them to be finished.Thu, 20 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTEssayswritingresearchhttps://narimanzhumabekov.com/board/#2026-08-19-a-note-on-writing-every-dayhttps://narimanzhumabekov.com/board/#2026-08-19-a-note-on-writing-every-dayThree weeks of writing 300 words every morning before reading anything. The words are mostly bad. But I've stopped opening documents and feeling nothing, which was the actual problem.Wed, 19 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoardhttps://narimanzhumabekov.com/notes/the-interview-i-keep-rewritinghttps://narimanzhumabekov.com/notes/the-interview-i-keep-rewritingSix drafts of a protocol later, the question I actually wanted was the one I kept cutting.Tue, 11 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTNotesfieldworkhttps://narimanzhumabekov.com/notes/a-footnote-on-sample-sizehttps://narimanzhumabekov.com/notes/a-footnote-on-sample-sizeSaturation is a claim about your coding scheme, not about the world.Thu, 02 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTNotesmethodqualitativehttps://narimanzhumabekov.com/essays/on-reading-badlyhttps://narimanzhumabekov.com/essays/on-reading-badlyA defence of skimming, abandoning books, and reading the conclusion first.Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTEssaysreadingmethod