asr-research-design
Use when defending the research design of an American Sociological Review (ASR) manuscript — causal/observational inference for quantitative and demographic work, case selection and comparison for comparative-historical work, site and informant logic for ethnography, and network/computational designs. ASR judges each tradition on its own terms. Strengthens the design; it does not write code.
Profile →npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill asr-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 (asr-research-design) ASR welcomes many methods but is exacting about each. The design must credibly link the argument (`asr-theory-building`) to evidence and rule out the leading alternative. Pick the section matching your method. ## When to trigger - Specifying identification, case selection, sampling, or site/informant logic - A reviewer questioned causal claims, generalization, selection, or a confound - Justifying why your design adjudicates the rival account from `asr-literature-positioning` ## Quantitative / demographic - **Be honest about what the design identifies.** Much of sociology is observational; distinguish description, association, and causation. If causal, state the assumptions (ignorability, parallel trends, exclusion) and defend them. - **Designs**: panel/fixed-effects, DID/event study (modern staggered estimators, not naive TWFE), IV, RDD, matching/weighting with balance and sensitivity; decomposition for inequality; event history for timing; age-period-cohort for demographic change. - **Inference & sampling**: respect complex survey design (weights, clustering, strata); cluster at the right level; report uncertainty. - **Sensitivity**: how st
- When to trigger
- Quantitative / demographic
- Comparative-historical
- Ethnographic / interview
- Network / computational
- The adjudication test (ASR-specific)
- What ASR referees demand of each design
- Worked micro-example (illustrative)
- Referee pushback → ASR-specific fix
- Calibration anchors
- Execution bridge (StatsPAI / Stata MCP)
- Anti-patterns
- Output format
- Supplementary resources
What does the asr-research-design skill do?
Use when defending the research design of an American Sociological Review (ASR) manuscript — causal/observational inference for quantitative and demographic work, case selection and comparison for comparative-historical work, site and informant logic for ethnography, and network/computational designs. ASR judges each tradition on its own terms. Strengthens the design; it does not write code.
How do I install it?
Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill asr-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.