sf-research-design

Research Design (sf-research-design)

Social Forces is known for methodological rigor, and its reviewers are demanding about each tradition. The design must credibly connect the argument (sf-theory-building) to evidence and rule out the strongest alternative. This skill is mode-aware: pick the section that matches your work and defend it on its own terms.

When to trigger

• Specifying identification, demographic design, case selection, or a network/computational pipeline
• A reviewer questioned causal claims, case choice, measurement, or a confound
• Deciding what design buys the cleanest test of your mechanism within a tight word budget
• Justifying why your design adjudicates the rival account from sf-literature-positioning

Quantitative / causal inference

• Identification first. State the estimand and the assumptions that license a causal reading (ignorability, parallel trends, exclusion, continuity). Defend them, don't assert them.
• Designs: panel/fixed effects, DID/event study (use modern staggered-adoption estimators, not naive TWFE), IV (first-stage strength, exclusion, weak-IV-robust inference), RDD (density tests, bandwidth robustness), matching/weighting with balance + sensitivity.
• Inference: cluster at the level of treatment/sampling; account for complex survey designs and weights; correct for multiple comparisons when testing many implications.
• Sensitivity: how strong must an unobserved confounder be to overturn the result?

Demographic

• Be explicit about period vs. cohort, exposure, and standardization/decomposition choices.
• Handle censoring and competing risks correctly in event-history work; justify the hazard form.

Comparative-historical / ethnographic

• Case selection justified by design logic (typical, deviant, most/least-likely, paired comparison) — not convenience. Say what the case is a case of.
• Process tracing with explicit tests (hoop, smoking-gun, straw-in-the-wind); state what evidence would have disconfirmed the argument.
• Source transparency: archives, interviews, fieldnotes — plan how they will be documented and cited (see sf-data-and-transparency).

Network / computational

• Justify boundary specification, tie definition, and the null/baseline you compare against.
• Validate any computational measure (e.g., classifier, topic model) against human-labeled samples.

The adjudication test (SF-specific)

For the single strongest rival explanation, write one sentence: "If the rival were true rather than my argument, the data would look like ___; instead they look like ___." If you cannot, the design does not yet identify the contribution.

Anti-patterns

• Naive TWFE on staggered treatment; clustering at the wrong level
• "Causal" language on a design that only supports association
• Convenience case selection dressed up as theory-driven
• An unvalidated computational measure treated as ground truth
• A design that cannot distinguish your argument from the leading alternative

What SF referees probe in the design

Because Social Forces built its standing on methodological rigor across a broad discipline, its referees read the design for whether the strongest alternative is actually ruled out — not whether the method is fashionable. A practical gate by mode:

Design mode	The check an SF referee runs first	Common decline trigger
Quant-causal	Estimand stated and key assumption defended?	"Causal" verbs on an associational design
Panel / DID	Modern staggered estimator + parallel-trends evidence?	Naive TWFE on staggered adoption
Demographic	Period vs. cohort, exposure, standardization explicit?	Rates compared without standardization
Comparative-historical	Case justified as a case of something?	Convenience case dressed as theory-driven
Network / computational	Boundary, tie definition, validated measure vs. a null?	Classifier output as ground truth

Calibration (hedged): SF welcomes all these traditions, but the bar is rigor on the tradition's own terms plus general-sociology significance — less theory-maximalist than AJS/ASR yet far stricter on identification than a descriptive outlet. Confirm method-specific expectations against current practice.

Worked vignette (illustrative)

A neighborhoods-and-attainment study uses a sibling comparison: children in one family exposed to different neighborhood poverty via a mid-childhood move. Movers to lower-poverty tracts show a 0.12 SD test-score gain (illustrative). SF-grade adjudication: "If the effect were pure selection it should vanish within families; instead the within-family estimate is 0.09 SD, so selection explains at most a quarter." Pairing this with an Oster-style sensitivity bound moves an SF referee from skeptic to advocate.

Referee-pushback patterns and the SF fix

• "Selection threatens the inference" → add a within-unit comparison or sensitivity bound.
• "Mechanism under-specified" → state the observable implication tested and what would have disconfirmed it.
• "Clustering at the wrong level" → cluster at treatment/sampling level; wild-cluster bootstrap if few.

Output format

【Mode】quant-causal / demographic / comparative-historical / ethnographic / network-computational
【Estimand or claim】what is being identified/shown
【Key assumption(s)】and how each is defended
【Rival ruled out】the adjudication sentence
【Robustness/sensitivity】planned checks
【Next】sf-data-analysis

Supplementary resources

• ../../resources/external_tools.md — design/identification packages (R/Stata/Python), demography, networks, CAQDAS/QCA
• ../../resources/official-source-map.md — SF rigor reputation and scope