wp-research-design
Use when defending the research design of a World Politics manuscript — comparative-historical and case selection, quantitative cross-national identification, qualitative process tracing, experiments, or formal-empirical linkage for cross-case questions. World Politics expects explicit research design and appropriate methods, judged on each tradition's own terms. Strengthens the design; it does not write code.
Profile →npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill wp-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 (wp-research-design) World Politics asks every article to "be explicit about its research design and use appropriate methods," and applies separate expectations to quantitative and qualitative work. Because the journal values **arguments that travel across cases**, the design must connect a portable argument (`wp-theory-building`) to evidence in a way that **rules out the strongest cross-case rival**. This skill is mode-aware: pick the section that matches your work. ## When to trigger - Specifying case selection, identification, or experimental design for a cross-case question - A reviewer questioned causal claims, case choice, external validity, or a confound - Justifying why your design adjudicates the rival account from `wp-literature-positioning` ## Comparative-historical & case-based (a World Politics staple) - **Case selection by design logic** — typical, deviant, most/least-likely, paired/structured-focused comparison, or set-theoretic (QCA). Say what each case is a case *of* and why the comparison identifies the argument. Convenience is not a design. - **Process tracing** with explicit tests (hoop, smoking-gun, straw-in-the-wind); state what evidence woul
- When to trigger
- Comparative-historical & case-based (a World Politics staple)
- Quantitative / cross-national
- Experiments & formal-empirical
- The adjudication test (World Politics–specific)
- Execution bridge (StatsPAI / Stata MCP)
- Anti-patterns
- Design-objection patterns and the venue-specific fix
- Worked micro-example (illustrative)
- Output format
- Supplementary resources
What does the wp-research-design skill do?
Use when defending the research design of a World Politics manuscript — comparative-historical and case selection, quantitative cross-national identification, qualitative process tracing, experiments, or formal-empirical linkage for cross-case questions. World Politics expects explicit research design and appropriate methods, judged on each tradition's 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 wp-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.