alterlab-social-science-methods

alterlab-social-science-methods is a skill for Claude Code from AlterLab-IEU/AlterLab-Academic-Skills. It costs 183 tokens per session (2,865 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide to advanced social science research methods, including ways to study language, conversations, archives, communities, networks, and policy. It covers both numerical and qualitative approaches, where researchers interpret evidence rather than only count it.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to plan discourse or conversation analysis, content analysis, case comparisons, process tracing, participatory research, Delphi studies, network analysis, reviews, and policy evaluations.
Why use it?
It helps researchers choose suitable methods and apply them with the right procedures and quality standards. This reduces the risk of using an unsuitable or poorly defined research approach.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: allowed-tools in frontmatter.

Part of the alterlab-domain-specific plugin — 18 skills shipped together

Good fit Use it to plan discourse or conversation analysis, content analysis, case comparisons, process tracing, participatory research, Delphi studies, network analysis, reviews, and policy evaluations.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/alterlab-ieu/alterlab-academic-skills/alterlab-social-science-methods
Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent
npx skills add AlterLab-IEU/AlterLab-Academic-Skills --skill alterlab-social-science-methods
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/AlterLab-IEU/AlterLab-Academic-Skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install alterlab-domain-specific, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 18 skills.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for alterlab-social-science-methods

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/alterlab-ieu/alterlab-academic-skills/alterlab-social-science-methods/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/alterlab-ieu/alterlab-academic-skills/alterlab-social-science-methods)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/alterlab-ieu/alterlab-academic-skills/alterlab-social-science-methods"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/alterlab-ieu/alterlab-academic-skills/alterlab-social-science-methods/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for alterlab-social-science-methods

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/alterlab-ieu/alterlab-academic-skills/alterlab-social-science-methods"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/alterlab-ieu/alterlab-academic-skills/alterlab-social-science-methods.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 183 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,865 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector pass 7 Sept 2026
How audits are shown
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00183 $0.02865
Opus 5 $0.00092 $0.01432
Sonnet 5 $0.00037 $0.00573
Haiku 4.5 $0.00018 $0.00286

Measured 6d ago against content hash 0758df93a612, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

alterlab-social-science-methods scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 6d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

skills/domain-specific/alterlab-social-science-methods/SKILL.md · 134 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 134 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Social Science Research Methods

Overview

Social science research encompasses a remarkably diverse methodological landscape. Beyond the familiar quantitative-qualitative divide lie specialized methods refined over decades within particular disciplinary traditions -- each carrying specific epistemological commitments, analytical procedures, and quality criteria. This skill covers advanced and specialized methods that go beyond introductory courses: discourse analysis in its multiple traditions, conversation analysis, quantitative content analysis, comparative methods including Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), process tracing, archival research, participatory and community-based research, the Delphi method and Q methodology, social network analysis, bibliometrics and scientometrics, systematic mapping reviews, and program evaluation and policy analysis.

It is designed for faculty and researchers across the social sciences -- sociology, political science, education, public health, communication, public policy, social work, and interdisciplinary fields. Many of these methods are also used in the humanities and applied fields such as management, urban planning, and international development.

The skill body below is a router: it states what each method is, when to reach for it, and where the full procedures, worked examples, and reference tables live. Detailed content has been split into the references/ files indexed at the end.

When to Use This Skill

Use this skill when you need to:

  • Conduct or design a discourse analysis study using Fairclough's CDA or Gee's framework
  • Analyze naturally occurring talk-in-interaction using conversation analysis (CA)
  • Design a quantitative content analysis with reliable coding schemes
  • Apply Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) or Mill's methods for cross-case comparison
  • Use process tracing to establish causal mechanisms in case study research
  • Plan and conduct archival research with primary historical sources
  • Design a participatory action research (PAR) or community-based participatory research (CBPR) project
  • Implement a Delphi study to build expert consensus
  • Conduct a Q methodology study to map subjective viewpoints
  • Perform social network analysis (SNA) on relational data
  • Conduct bibliometric or scientometric analysis of scholarly literatures
  • Design a systematic mapping review (as distinct from a systematic review)
  • Plan a program evaluation using established frameworks
  • Conduct policy analysis using structured analytical approaches

Read the full file on GitHub · 134 lines

Files

What ships with it

6 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 6d ago First seen · 134 lines · 183 tokens per session scan A 0758df93a612

Subscribe to this mod's changes

alterlab-social-science-methods is a skill published in the GitHub repository AlterLab-IEU/AlterLab-Academic-Skills (66 stars, last pushed 7d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 183 tokens to every session and 2,865 once invoked, about $0.0009 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-09-05.

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