| name | asr-tables-figures |
| description | Use when building tables and figures for an American Sociological Review (ASR) manuscript. ASR excludes tables and figures from the 15,000-word count but still expects them to be clear, self-contained, and ASA-formatted. Designs exhibits; it does not run the analysis. |
Tables & Figures (asr-tables-figures)
Exhibits are where a masked reviewer checks whether the result is real. ASR excludes tables and
figures from the 15,000-word limit (text, references, and footnotes count) — so you are not penalized
for a clear exhibit, but it must earn its place and stand on its own.
When to trigger
- Designing the main results table/figure or a key descriptive exhibit
- Deciding what belongs in the article vs. supplementary materials
- A reviewer found an exhibit unclear, mislabeled, or not self-contained
- Presenting qualitative or comparative-historical evidence in tabular/visual form
Principles
- Self-contained. Title, row/column labels, and a complete note make each exhibit intelligible
alone. State the sample, N, units, weighting, and what the estimate is.
- Show magnitude and uncertainty. Effect sizes and intervals — not stars alone. Coefficient and
marginal-effects plots often beat dense coefficient walls.
- Sociology-specific exhibits. Mobility/transition tables and flow diagrams; survival curves and
Lexis/age-period-cohort surfaces for demography; network graphs; sequence-analysis chronograms;
evidence tables linking claims to sources for comparative-historical/ethnographic work.
- Accessible. Colorblind-safe palettes; legible in grayscale; no chartjunk or 3D.
- Reproducible. Generated by the master script (quantitative) so numbers match shared materials;
for qualitative exhibits, excerpts must be faithful to the coded data.
Format
- Follow the ASA Style Guide for table/figure formatting and notes.
- Double-spaced manuscript, Times New Roman 12 pt; place tables/figures per the guidelines.
- Keep identifying information out of exhibits (masked review).
Exhibit conventions a masked ASR reviewer expects
The ASA flagship admits exhibits from every tradition but holds them to one standard: a reviewer who
may not share your method must be able to read the evidence unaided. Match the exhibit to the
tradition, then verify it carries magnitude and uncertainty.
| Tradition | Workhorse exhibit | The note must state |
|---|
| Quant / stratification | coefficient/marginal-effects plot, mobility table | N, weights, estimator, what the estimate is |
| Demography | survival curve, Lexis surface, decomposition | population, period, age structure |
| Comparative-historical | evidence table (claim → sources), timeline | case set, source provenance |
| Ethnographic | coded-excerpt table with contrary instances | coding scheme, anonymization |
| Network / computational | graph, sequence chronogram, validation table | boundary spec, validation against labels |
Worked micro-example (illustrative)
A main results table for an administrative-data study of gender wage gaps is redesigned for ASR.
Before: 6 columns of coefficients, stars only, no note → reviewer can't tell magnitude or sample
After: marginal-effects plot — adjusted gap 14.2% (95% CI 11.8–16.6), N=412,000, survey-weighted,
occupation + firm FE; grayscale-legible, colorblind-safe palette
Self-contained note (illustrative): "Predicted gap from a weighted model; bars are 95% CIs;
estimates reproduce from master.R, seed=11."
The redesign makes the exhibit stand alone, leads with the substantive magnitude an inequality scholar
cares about, and ties the numbers to the shared script.
Referee pushback → ASR-specific fix
- "I can't read this table without the text." → Add a complete note (sample, N, units, weighting,
what the estimate is) so it is intelligible alone.
- "Stars don't tell me if this matters." → Replace with effect sizes and intervals, ideally a
marginal-effects plot a generalist can scan.
- "Your figure dies in grayscale." → Re-encode with colorblind-safe, grayscale-legible channels;
drop chartjunk and 3D.
- "The qualitative table looks cherry-picked." → Include contrary excerpts and report the coding
scheme so the evidence reads as systematic.
Calibration anchors
- Exhibits are excluded from the word cap — use the room. ASR counts text, references, and
footnotes but not tables/figures, so a clear, self-contained exhibit costs nothing against length.
- Magnitude over significance. The flagship's broad readership wants to know how much, with what
uncertainty, not merely that a coefficient cleared a threshold.
- One reproducibility standard, two forms. Quantitative values must match the master script;
qualitative excerpts must be faithful to the coded data — both are checkable claims to a reviewer.
Execution bridge (StatsPAI / Stata MCP)
Generate exhibits from the fitted result, not by retyping numbers (the usual source of
body-vs-supplement drift). Full map: execution-with-mcp. ASR is general sociology where observational designs dominate; foreground identification (DiD/IV/RDD), decomposition, and clustered inference.
- Tables:
etable (multi-model columns) or did_summary_to_latex straight from the
result_id.
- Figures:
plot_from_result / enhanced_event_study_plot / event_study_table —
axis units and the SE/clustering note baked in.
- Every note names the estimator + clustering and states the effect size in
interpretable units.
See a full fitted-result → exhibit chain in the JF execution walkthrough.
Anti-patterns
- Tables that require the prose to be intelligible (not self-contained)
- Significance stars with no effect size or interval
- Decorative figures that add no evidence
- Color-only encoding that fails in grayscale or for colorblind readers
- Quantitative exhibit values that don't match the analysis script
Output format
【Main exhibit】what it shows + why a table/figure
【Self-contained?】title + labels + note + N/units/weights present? [Y/N]
【Magnitude + uncertainty shown?】[Y/N]
【Accessible?】grayscale-legible + colorblind-safe? [Y/N]
【Reproducible / faithful?】matches script or coded data? [Y/N]
【Next】asr-writing-style
Supplementary resources
