ajs-research-design
Use when defending the research design of an American Journal of Sociology (AJS) manuscript on its own methodological terms — quantitative, comparative-historical, ethnographic, network, or formal. AJS judges each kind of work by the standards of its tradition; the design must support the theoretical claim. Defends the design; it does not run the analysis.
Profile →npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill ajs-research-design --agent claude-code
Same command for any agent — swap --agent for codex, cursor, copilot.
Weekly change comes from our own snapshots, not the repository page — it measures attention, not adoption.
# Research Design (ajs-research-design) AJS is method-pluralist: it publishes leading quantitative, **comparative-historical**, ethnographic, network, and formal work, and it judges each by the standards of *its own tradition*. The job here is to make the design defensible to a generalist, possibly cross-method, double-blind reviewer — and to show the design actually supports the theoretical claim from `ajs-theory-building`. ## When to trigger - Choosing or justifying the design before data collection or analysis - A reader questioned identification, case selection, sampling, or evidentiary warrant - Aligning the design with the mechanism and observable implications - Mixed-methods work that must defend each component on its own terms ## Defend the design (by tradition) ### Quantitative / observational - State the **estimand** and the **identifying assumptions** plainly; AJS rewards honesty over false precision. Where the design is descriptive or associational, say so and theorize accordingly. - Justify sample, measurement, and model; pre-empt confounding and selection. ### Comparative-historical - Make **case selection** and the **comparative logic** explicit (most-similar / most-
- When to trigger
- Defend the design (by tradition)
- Quantitative / observational
- Comparative-historical
- Ethnographic / interview
- Network / computational
- Formal
- Match design to claim
- Referee-pushback patterns by tradition (the modal AJS objection)
- Calibration with a quick example (hedged)
- Execution bridge (StatsPAI / Stata MCP)
- Anti-patterns
- Design pass for American Journal of Sociology
- Output format
What does the ajs-research-design skill do?
Use when defending the research design of an American Journal of Sociology (AJS) manuscript on its own methodological terms — quantitative, comparative-historical, ethnographic, network, or formal. AJS judges each kind of work by the standards of its tradition; the design must support the theoretical claim. Defends the design; it does not run the analysis.
How do I install it?
Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill ajs-research-design --agent claude-code` — it drops the skill into your project so the agent can pick it up. Swap the --agent value for codex, cursor or copilot if you use one of those.
Where does this skill come from?
From brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills, a repository with 909 stars. We read it straight from the repository tree rather than a submitted listing, so what you see here is what is actually published.
Is a popular skill a good skill?
Not necessarily. Stars measure attention, not adoption — a repository can trend for a week and be abandoned. That is why we show the weekly change from our own snapshots next to the total, instead of a single flattering number.