popdevr-research-design
Use when defending the research design of a Population and Development Review (PDR, Wiley / Population Council) manuscript — choosing among demographic methods (life tables, decomposition, event-history, age-period-cohort, projections) and, where the question is causal, defending identification, with the population-and-development linkage made explicit. PDR judges each method on its own terms and asks what it shows about development. Strengthens the design; it does not write code.
Profile →npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill popdevr-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 (popdevr-research-design) PDR accepts a wide range of approaches — empirical demography, formal demography, and conceptual synthesis — but is demanding about each, and it asks one extra question: **does the design illuminate the population-and-development linkage**, not just a demographic quantity? The design must credibly connect the argument (`popdevr-theory-building`) to evidence a broad readership will trust. This skill is method-aware: pick the section that matches your question and defend it against the strongest rival. ## When to trigger - Choosing the method that actually answers a population-and-development question - A reviewer questioned the rate construction, the identification, or the development linkage - Specifying a decomposition, event-history, age-period-cohort, or projection design - Justifying why your design adjudicates the rival account from `popdevr-literature-positioning` ## Match the method to the question - **Life tables** — for survival, life expectancy, and exposure: period vs. cohort, abridged vs. complete; multiple-decrement (cause-specific) where the development story is cause-specific. - **Decomposition** — to attribute a difference
- When to trigger
- Match the method to the question
- When the question is causal (population ↔ development)
- The adjudication test (PDR-specific)
- Cross-country comparability (a recurring PDR design problem)
- When the contribution is a synthetic essay (no new estimate)
- Execution bridge (StatsPAI / Stata MCP)
- Anti-patterns
- Output format
- Supplementary resources
What does the popdevr-research-design skill do?
Use when defending the research design of a Population and Development Review (PDR, Wiley / Population Council) manuscript — choosing among demographic methods (life tables, decomposition, event-history, age-period-cohort, projections) and, where the question is causal, defending identification, with the population-and-development linkage made explicit. PDR judges each method on its own terms and asks what it shows about development. Strengthens the design; it does not write code.
How do I install it?
Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill popdevr-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.