Data Analysis (asr-data-analysis)

ASR reviewers are methodologically demanding across very different traditions. Whether your evidence is regression coefficients, life tables, archival sequences, or coded fieldnotes, the analysis must be transparent, well-documented, and reproducible to the extent your data allow. Design decisions live in asr-research-design.

When to trigger

• Running main and supporting analyses; building the results/findings section
• A reviewer asked for robustness, heterogeneity, alternative specifications, or more evidence
• Documenting how qualitative claims are grounded in the data
• Making the analysis reproducible before sharing materials

Analysis norms ASR expects

Quantitative / demographic

1. Report uncertainty and magnitude, not just significance — intervals and substantive effect

sizes; respect survey design (weights, clustering).

1. Robustness that probes, not decorates — alternative measures, samples, estimators, and

specifications that could break the result; say what you learn.

1. Heterogeneity with discipline — pre-specify or justify subgroups; adjust for multiple

comparisons; don't mine an interaction and theorize it post hoc.

1. Measurement — validate constructs, report reliability, show results aren't an artifact of a

coding/scaling choice (especially for inequality and well-being measures).

Comparative-historical / ethnographic

• Make the chain of evidence explicit: link each claim to specific sources, observations, or

cases; present negative/disconfirming evidence.

• Use evidence tables, timelines, or coded excerpts so reviewers can trace claims to data.

Computational / text-as-data

• Document model/version, hyperparameters, seeds, preprocessing; validate against human-labeled

samples; report stability. Don't treat model outputs as ground truth.

Reproducibility while you work

• One master script regenerates every table/figure from raw/constructed data (quantitative).
• Set and report seeds for any stochastic step.
• Pin software/package versions (renv.lock, requirements.txt, recorded ssc/net installs).
• For qualitative work, keep a documented codebook and analytic memos.

What an ASR analyst-reviewer is checking

As the ASA's flagship, ASR draws referees who police analysis on each tradition's terms while asking one disciplinary question — does the evidence warrant a claim that speaks to general sociological theory? Use this table to pre-empt the masked reviewer.

| Reviewer probe | Clears the ASR bar | Triggers a revision flag | |----------------|--------------------|---------------------------| | "Just a significant coefficient?" | magnitude + interval tied to a mechanism | stars-only, no interpretation | | "Survives a reasonable confounder?" | sensitivity bound reported | one preferred spec, no probing | | "Weighted and clustered right?" | design-respecting SEs | default SEs on a complex sample | | "Where is disconfirming evidence?" | negative cases / null subgroups | only confirming evidence | | "Heterogeneity real or mined?" | pre-specified or MHT-adjusted | one fished interaction theorized post hoc |

Worked micro-example (illustrative numbers)

A hypothetical ASR study links employer credit-checking to a Black-white callback gap using administrative hiring records across 1,200 firms.

Main effect: callback gap 8.0 pp (95% CI 5.1–10.9) under firm + occupation FE
Mechanism: gap concentrated in customer-facing roles (11.2 pp) vs back-office (2.3 pp)
Sensitivity: a confounder must be ~1.7× the strongest covariate to nullify
Negative case: no gap where state law bans the practice (0.4 pp, CI −2.0–2.8) → boundary evidence
Reproducible: one master script, seed=2026, renv.lock pinned

The intervals carry the claim, the role contrast names a portable mechanism (statistical discrimination via screening signals), and the law-ban null is reported as evidence, not buried.

Referee pushback → ASR-specific fix

• "Significant but does it matter?" → Give a scenario magnitude and name what changes for inequality

theory.

• "Robustness agrees by construction." → Add a spec that could break it (placebo period,

falsification subgroup) and report what you learned.

• "This reads as a within-subfield exercise." → State which general sociological debate the estimate

adjudicates before the table, not after.

Calibration anchors

• Theory-forward, not table-forward. ASR rewards an analysis that reads as a test of a mechanism;

a results dump that defers the "why" under-performs.

• The "so what for sociology" bar. Each headline number should map to a sentence a generalist could

repeat about how social processes work.

• Breadth of admissible evidence. Coefficients, life tables, coded fieldnotes, and validated model

outputs all qualify — the standard is the claim-to-evidence link.

Execution bridge (StatsPAI / Stata MCP)

Run the battery, don't just enumerate it. Full map: execution-with-mcp. ASR is general sociology where observational designs dominate; foreground identification (DiD/IV/RDD), decomposition, and clustered inference.

• Many outcomes / specifications: romano_wolf (step-down FWER) or

benjamini_hochberg — report the adjusted threshold.

• OVB sensitivity: oster_delta / sensemakr.
• Inference: wild_cluster_bootstrap (few clusters), twoway_cluster / conley;

multilevel data → cluster at the right level.

• Re-fit off one handle: audit_result(result_id) lists the missing checks and the

exact suggest_function for each.

• Exhibits: etable / did_summary_to_latex from the handle — no retyped numbers.

Keep the decisive checks in the body and the exhaustive battery in the supplement. See the executed chain in the JF execution walkthrough.

Anti-patterns

• Stars-only tables with no effect sizes or intervals; ignoring survey weights
• "Robustness" that only reruns near-identical specs to manufacture stability
• p-hacking / HARKing exploratory results into hypotheses
• Qualitative claims with no traceable evidence or negative cases
• Computational outputs reported without validation

Output format

【Main result】magnitude + interval (quant) OR evidence chain (qual)
【Identification/grounding check】(per research-design) result
【Robustness / negative cases】what held
【Heterogeneity】pre-specified? MHT-adjusted? (quant)
【Reproducible】master script + seeds + pinned versions OR documented codebook? [Y/N]
【Next】asr-tables-figures

Supplementary resources

• ../../resources/external_tools.md — estimation, demography, networks, and text-as-data packages
• ../../resources/official-source-map.md — ASA data-sharing norms