commres-tables-figures

Tables & Figures (commres-tables-figures)

Exhibits are where a CR reviewer checks whether the result is real and whether the mechanism holds. Because CR is a quantitative, APA-reporting journal, every table and figure must show effect sizes and uncertainty, not significance stars alone, and follow APA formatting.

When to trigger

• Designing the main results table/figure or a key descriptive/measurement exhibit
• Deciding what belongs in the article vs. the online supplement
• A reviewer found an exhibit unclear, mislabeled, or not self-contained
• Presenting mediation/moderation results readably

Principles

1. Self-contained. A reader should understand each exhibit from its title, column/axis labels, and note alone — without hunting through the text. State units, sample, N, and what the estimate is.
2. Show magnitude and uncertainty. Report effect sizes (d, η²ₚ, standardized β, R²) with CIs or SDs. Coefficient/forest plots, marginal-effects and predicted-value plots, mediation path diagrams, and interaction (simple-slopes) plots communicate better than a wall of coefficients.
3. APA format. Table/figure numbering, titles, and notes per APA; consistent decimals; report the statistics APA expects (M, SD, test statistic with df, effect size, exact p).
4. Measurement exhibits. For SEM/CFA, show the measurement model (loadings, fit indices); for content analysis, report category frequencies and intercoder reliability by category.
5. Accessible. Colorblind-safe palettes; legible in grayscale; no chartjunk, no 3D, no needless color. Reviewers must parse it quickly.
6. Main text vs. supplement. Keep the few exhibits that carry the argument in the article; move full specifications, robustness grids, scale items, and codebooks to the online supplement (also anonymized) — this also helps you fit the page budget.
7. Reproducible. Each exhibit is generated by the master script; numbers match the deposited materials (see commres-transparency-and-data).

Discipline-specific exhibits

• Experiment cell means with CIs; ANOVA effect-size tables.
• Mediation/moderated-mediation path diagrams with indirect-effect estimates and bootstrap CIs.
• Simple-slopes / Johnson–Neyman plots for interactions.
• SEM/CFA measurement-model tables (loadings, AVE/CR, fit indices).
• Content-analysis reliability tables (alpha by category) and category-frequency exhibits.

Anti-patterns

• Tables that require the prose to be intelligible (not self-contained)
• Significance stars with no effect size, SD, or interval (an APA-reporting failure at CR)
• A mediation table without bootstrap CIs, or an interaction with no simple-slopes display
• Cramming every robustness check into the main text (blows the page budget — use the supplement)
• Color-only encoding that fails in grayscale or for colorblind readers
• Exhibit numbers/values that don't match the deposited code output

Exhibit 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: For every table or figure, state the estimand or object, the sample/N, the uncertainty display, the effect size shown, and one sentence the exhibit proves.
• 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, Human Communication Research, New Media & Society. 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 exhibit】what it shows + why a figure/table
【Self-contained?】title + labels + note + N/units present? [Y/N]
【Magnitude + uncertainty?】effect size + CI/SD shown (not stars only)? [Y/N]
【APA format?】numbering/titles/notes per APA? [Y/N]
【Accessible?】grayscale-legible + colorblind-safe? [Y/N]
【Article vs supplement】split decided, page-budget impact noted
【Reproducible?】generated by master script, matches materials? [Y/N]
【Next】commres-writing-style

Supplementary resources

• ../../resources/external_tools.md — plotting, mediation-diagram, and SEM/CFA packages
• ../../resources/code/ — table/figure export skeleton
• ../../resources/official-source-map.md — APA reporting and page limit