ajs-research-design

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-different, typical / deviant, scope of the comparison).
• Keep a clear evidentiary trail from primary sources to claims; treat sequence and conjuncture as evidence, not decoration.

Ethnographic / interview

• Describe access, site/case selection, duration, and positionality; justify why this case bears the theoretical weight.
• Make the link from fieldnotes/transcripts to claims legible (without exposing informants).

Network / computational

• Justify boundary specification, tie definition, and missingness; match the model (e.g., ERGM, SAOM) to the relational question.

Formal

• Tie assumptions to the substantive setting; specify what empirical patterns would corroborate or challenge the model.

Match design to claim

The single most common AJS reviewer objection: the design cannot bear the theoretical claim. Walk the chain: claim → mechanism → observable implication → the design's leverage on it. If a step is weak, tighten the claim or strengthen the design — do not overclaim.

Referee-pushback patterns by tradition (the modal AJS objection)

The most common AJS design rejection is "the design cannot bear the theoretical claim." Recurring objections by tradition; confirm method expectations against the journal's current submission guidelines.

Referee writes…	Tradition	The AJS-appropriate fix
"Selecting on the outcome."	comparative-historical	add a non-outcome case or acknowledge the limit
"Representativeness asserted."	ethnographic	argue why this case bears the theoretical weight
"Identification overclaimed."	quantitative	restate as descriptive/associational and theorize it

Calibration with a quick example (hedged)

AJS judges each tradition by its own standard, not a single template; unlike a parsimony-first sibling that privileges a clean causal estimate, it accepts a richly defended interpretive or comparative design when it bears the claim. Illustrative: an author selecting four states that all underwent revolution, then theorizing "state breakdown causes revolution," is flagged for selecting on the outcome; the fix adds two negative cases (comparable fiscal crises that did not break down) so the comparison can see the mechanism fail as well as fire. Confirm method guidance against the journal's current submission guidelines.

Anti-patterns

• Borrowing a quantitative identification template for work that is interpretive or comparative
• Case selection that quietly guarantees the result (selecting on the outcome without acknowledging it)
• Ethnography that asserts representativeness it cannot support
• Overclaiming causality from an associational design
• A design that tests something adjacent to, but not, the stated theoretical claim
• Designing only to confirm the mechanism, with no case where it could be seen to fail

Design pass for American Journal of Sociology

Treat this skill as an executable review pass, not a prose hint. First lock the social process, data leverage, causal or interpretive warrant, and theoretical payoff; then judge whether the current manuscript answers the venue's real reader: sociology reviewers who value deep theory, durable empirical leverage, and careful social-mechanism claims.

• Do the pass: Lock the unit, scope, comparison, validity threat, and minimum decisive evidence before recommending collection, analysis, or submission.
• Return a ledger: give claim / evidence / risk / manuscript location rows, so the next agent can edit rather than rediscover the issue.
• Sibling guard: compare against ASR for broader empirical sociology, Social Forces for wider substantive range, Demography for population mechanisms; if a sibling owns the contribution, recommend re-routing before polishing format.
• Stop condition: do not give submission-ready advice until the pack's resources/official-source-map.md has been checked for volatile rules and the manuscript has one concrete fix for the largest venue-specific risk.

Output format

【Tradition】quantitative / comparative-historical / ethnographic / network / formal / mixed
【Claim it must support】from theory-building
【Design leverage】how this design bears on the claim
【Key assumptions / threats】identification, selection, access, boundary, etc.
【Evidentiary trail】sources → claims is legible? [Y/N]
【Verdict】supports the claim / needs tightening / overclaims (fix)
【Next】ajs-data-analysis

Supplementary resources

• ../../resources/external_tools.md — design and method tooling by tradition
• ../../resources/official-source-map.md — AJS method-pluralism and reviewer-matching policy