commres-data-analysis

Data Analysis (commres-data-analysis)

CR reviewers are quantitatively sophisticated, and the journal expects APA-style statistical reporting (effect sizes and standard deviations, not stars alone). Analyze as if your numbers will be scrutinized — because they will. This skill covers execution and reporting norms; design decisions live in commres-research-design, and deposit live in commres-transparency-and-data.

When to trigger

• Running main and supporting analyses; building the Results section
• A reviewer asked for robustness, an alternative specification, or a mediation re-analysis
• Reconciling preregistered vs. exploratory analyses
• Making the analysis reproducible before deposit

Analysis norms CR expects

1. APA statistical reporting. Report effect sizes (d, η²ₚ, R², standardized β) and dispersion (SDs, CIs), test statistics with df, and exact p where feasible — not significance stars alone.
2. Right model for the design. ANOVA/ANCOVA for factorial experiments; OLS/logistic regression with proper controls; SEM/CFA for latent constructs; multilevel models for nested data (e.g., messages within participants, students within classrooms).
3. Mediation/moderation done right. For PROCESS/SEM models, justify the causal ordering; report indirect effects with bootstrap CIs; for moderated mediation report the index and conditional indirect effects; acknowledge cross-sectional limits on process claims.
4. Report uncertainty honestly. Confidence intervals and effect magnitudes; interpret the substantive meaning of the estimate, not just whether it crossed .05.
5. Robustness that probes, not decorates. Show specifications that could break the result (alternative measures, covariate sets, estimators, exclusions), and say what you learn.
6. Measurement and reliability. Report scale reliability (alpha/omega) and, for content analysis, intercoder reliability; show results are not an artifact of a coding/scaling choice.
7. Preregistration discipline. Clearly separate confirmatory (registered) from exploratory analyses; reconcile and justify deviations; correct for multiple comparisons where you test many.

Computational / text-as-data specifics

• Document model/version, hyperparameters, seeds, and validation against human-labeled samples.
• For topic models/embeddings/LLM pipelines, report stability and a validation step; don't treat outputs as ground truth.

Reproducibility while you work (not at the end)

• One master script regenerates every table and figure from the (raw or constructed) data.
• Set and report seeds for bootstrap, simulation, and any stochastic step.
• Pin software/package versions (renv.lock, requirements.txt; note SPSS/Mplus/PROCESS versions).
• Keep table/figure numbers in the manuscript matched to script outputs.

Anti-patterns

• Stars-only tables with no effect sizes, SDs, or intervals (an APA-reporting failure at CR)
• Reporting a mediation without bootstrap CIs, or a moderated mediation without the index
• "Robustness" that only reruns near-identical specs to manufacture stability
• p-hacking / fishing for a significant interaction; HARKing exploratory results into hypotheses
• Reporting a content analysis without intercoder reliability
• A Results section whose numbers the code cannot reproduce

Evidence pass for Communication Research

Treat this skill as an executable review pass, not a prose hint. First lock the communication process, the measured constructs, the study design, and the inferential claim; then judge whether the manuscript answers CR's real reader: a quantitatively trained communication scientist who weighs theory, measurement validity, identification, and effect interpretation.

• Do the pass: Audit before polishing prose — model choice, effect sizes, uncertainty, mediation CIs, reliability, multiple-testing, missingness, and reproducibility must be visible.
• Return a ledger: give claim / evidence / risk / manuscript location rows so the next agent edits rather than rediscovers the issue.
• Sibling guard: Journal of Communication (all-paradigm), Human Communication Research (interpersonal), New Media & Society (digital). If a sibling owns the contribution, re-route before polishing format.
• Stop condition: do not give submission-ready advice until resources/official-source-map.md has been checked and the manuscript has one concrete fix for the largest venue-specific risk.

Output format

【Main estimate】magnitude + effect size + interval + substantive meaning
【Model】ANOVA / regression / SEM / multilevel — matches the design?
【Mediation/moderation】indirect effect + bootstrap CI / index of moderated mediation?
【Robustness】specs that could break it → what held
【Reliability】scale (alpha/omega) / intercoder reliability reported?
【Confirmatory vs exploratory】clearly separated? MHT-adjusted where needed?
【Reproducible】master script + seeds + pinned versions? [Y/N]
【Next】commres-tables-figures

Supplementary resources

• ../../resources/external_tools.md — estimation, reliability, mediation/SEM, and text-as-data packages
• ../../resources/code/ — reproducible analysis skeleton (clean → descriptive → models → robustness → tables)
• ../../resources/official-source-map.md — APA statistical-reporting expectation