asr-tables-figures

Tables & Figures (asr-tables-figures)

Exhibits are where a masked reviewer checks whether the result is real. ASR excludes tables and figures from the 15,000-word limit (text, references, and footnotes count) — so you are not penalized for a clear exhibit, but it must earn its place and stand on its own.

When to trigger

• Designing the main results table/figure or a key descriptive exhibit
• Deciding what belongs in the article vs. supplementary materials
• A reviewer found an exhibit unclear, mislabeled, or not self-contained
• Presenting qualitative or comparative-historical evidence in tabular/visual form

Principles

1. Self-contained. Title, row/column labels, and a complete note make each exhibit intelligible alone. State the sample, N, units, weighting, and what the estimate is.
2. Show magnitude and uncertainty. Effect sizes and intervals — not stars alone. Coefficient and marginal-effects plots often beat dense coefficient walls.
3. Sociology-specific exhibits. Mobility/transition tables and flow diagrams; survival curves and Lexis/age-period-cohort surfaces for demography; network graphs; sequence-analysis chronograms; evidence tables linking claims to sources for comparative-historical/ethnographic work.
4. Accessible. Colorblind-safe palettes; legible in grayscale; no chartjunk or 3D.
5. Reproducible. Generated by the master script (quantitative) so numbers match shared materials; for qualitative exhibits, excerpts must be faithful to the coded data.

Format

• Follow the ASA Style Guide for table/figure formatting and notes.
• Double-spaced manuscript, Times New Roman 12 pt; place tables/figures per the guidelines.
• Keep identifying information out of exhibits (masked review).

Exhibit conventions a masked ASR reviewer expects

The ASA flagship admits exhibits from every tradition but holds them to one standard: a reviewer who may not share your method must be able to read the evidence unaided. Match the exhibit to the tradition, then verify it carries magnitude and uncertainty.

Tradition	Workhorse exhibit	The note must state
Quant / stratification	coefficient/marginal-effects plot, mobility table	N, weights, estimator, what the estimate is
Demography	survival curve, Lexis surface, decomposition	population, period, age structure
Comparative-historical	evidence table (claim → sources), timeline	case set, source provenance
Ethnographic	coded-excerpt table with contrary instances	coding scheme, anonymization
Network / computational	graph, sequence chronogram, validation table	boundary spec, validation against labels

Worked micro-example (illustrative)

A main results table for an administrative-data study of gender wage gaps is redesigned for ASR.

Before: 6 columns of coefficients, stars only, no note → reviewer can't tell magnitude or sample
After: marginal-effects plot — adjusted gap 14.2% (95% CI 11.8–16.6), N=412,000, survey-weighted,
  occupation + firm FE; grayscale-legible, colorblind-safe palette
Self-contained note (illustrative): "Predicted gap from a weighted model; bars are 95% CIs;
  estimates reproduce from master.R, seed=11."

The redesign makes the exhibit stand alone, leads with the substantive magnitude an inequality scholar cares about, and ties the numbers to the shared script.

Referee pushback → ASR-specific fix

• "I can't read this table without the text." → Add a complete note (sample, N, units, weighting, what the estimate is) so it is intelligible alone.
• "Stars don't tell me if this matters." → Replace with effect sizes and intervals, ideally a marginal-effects plot a generalist can scan.
• "Your figure dies in grayscale." → Re-encode with colorblind-safe, grayscale-legible channels; drop chartjunk and 3D.
• "The qualitative table looks cherry-picked." → Include contrary excerpts and report the coding scheme so the evidence reads as systematic.

Calibration anchors

• Exhibits are excluded from the word cap — use the room. ASR counts text, references, and footnotes but not tables/figures, so a clear, self-contained exhibit costs nothing against length.
• Magnitude over significance. The flagship's broad readership wants to know how much, with what uncertainty, not merely that a coefficient cleared a threshold.
• One reproducibility standard, two forms. Quantitative values must match the master script; qualitative excerpts must be faithful to the coded data — both are checkable claims to a reviewer.

Anti-patterns

• Tables that require the prose to be intelligible (not self-contained)
• Significance stars with no effect size or interval
• Decorative figures that add no evidence
• Color-only encoding that fails in grayscale or for colorblind readers
• Quantitative exhibit values that don't match the analysis script

Output format

【Main exhibit】what it shows + why a table/figure
【Self-contained?】title + labels + note + N/units/weights present? [Y/N]
【Magnitude + uncertainty shown?】[Y/N]
【Accessible?】grayscale-legible + colorblind-safe? [Y/N]
【Reproducible / faithful?】matches script or coded data? [Y/N]
【Next】asr-writing-style

Supplementary resources

• ../../resources/external_tools.md — plotting, demography, and network visualization tools
• ../../resources/official-source-map.md — word-count rule (tables/figures excluded) and ASA Style Guide