Research Design (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.