AlterLab-IEU SSci Orchestrator — Route the Study, Hold the Passport, Enforce the Gates
Skill type: DISCIPLINE-ENFORCING (thin coordinator). This is the conductor of the social-science methods spine. It does no analysis. It walks a study through the gates in order, carries a single Design Passport between them, and refuses to let a stage run before its prerequisite gate has passed. For the actual routing/refusal logic, each gate owns its own skill; this skill owns sequence and hand-off.
The Core Rule
NO STAGE RUNS BEFORE ITS GATE PASSES. THE PASSPORT IS THE SINGLE SOURCE OF TRUTH.
A methods pipeline fails when stages run out of order — sampling sized before the design is fixed, a causal estimator run before the identifying assumption is pinned, a discussion written before the claim is audited. The orchestrator makes the order non-optional and makes every gate's verdict visible in one artifact.
When to Use This Skill
- "Walk me through designing and analyzing this whole study."
- "Run the methods pipeline / a full methodology review on my project."
- "I have a research question, some data, and a survey — take it from design to inference."
- The user's ask spans more than one gate/module and needs coordination.
Does NOT Trigger
| The request is really about… | Route to | Why not this skill |
|---|---|---|
| A single stage (design, measurement, sampling, or claim audit) | the matching alterlab-ssci-*-gate |
Trigger the gate directly; no orchestration needed. |
| Running one analysis method (DiD, CFA, QCA, SNA, ABM, text) | the matching analysis module | The module does it; the orchestrator only dispatches. |
| Multi-agent execution mechanics (fan-out, judge panels) | alterlab-workflow-orchestration |
General composition engine; this skill is the social-science-specific spine on top of it. |
| A non-methods task (writing prose, literature search) | alterlab-paper-writer / alterlab-deep-research |
Outside the methods pipeline. |
The Pipeline
research question
└─> [design-gate] ── pins design_type + identifying_assumption ──▶ (MANDATORY: BLOCK-capable)
└─> [measurement-gate] quantitative constructs ─┐
[reflexivity-gate] qualitative/interpretivist ─┴─▶ (measurement-stage analog)
└─> [sampling-gate] ── frame + method + size logic ──▶ (WARN default)
└─> [ANALYSIS MODULE] ── dispatched by design_type / data (see routing table) ──▶
└─> [inference-gate] ── audits claims vs design/sample ──▶ (MANDATORY: BLOCK-capable)
└─> reporting
At the measurement stage the orchestrator picks the paradigm-appropriate gate:
alterlab-ssci-measurement-gate for quantitative constructs (reliability/validity/invariance),
alterlab-ssci-reflexivity-gate for qualitative/interpretivist work (positionality + Lincoln &
Guba trustworthiness). Mixed-methods runs both on the respective strands.
Analysis-module routing (by design_type + data in the Passport):
| If the design / data is… | Dispatch to |
|---|---|
| Complex-sample survey (weights / strata / clusters / FPC) | alterlab-survey-analysis |
| Quasi-experimental / observational causal (DiD, IV, RDD, panel FE) | alterlab-causal-inference |
| Clustered / nested / longitudinal (variance partitioning) | alterlab-multilevel-models |
| Latent constructs, CFA / SEM / IRT / invariance | alterlab-sem-psychometrics |
| Small-N configurational, set-theoretic (fsQCA/csQCA) | alterlab-qca |
| Relational / network data | alterlab-sna |
| Simulation of interacting agents | alterlab-abm-mesa |
| Corpora / open-ended text (computational) | alterlab-text-as-data |
| Qualitative coding of interviews / open text (human) | alterlab-qualitative-analysis |
| Pooling effect sizes across studies | alterlab-meta-analysis |
| Interpretive / theory-building | alterlab-qualitative-methods (existing) |
| Combined strands | alterlab-mixed-methods (existing) |
Cross-cutting: when the dataset has missing values, alterlab-missing-data runs before the
analysis module (state the mechanism, multiply impute) so every downstream estimate pools correctly.
Full stage contract, PASS/WARN/BLOCK rules, and the analysis-module decision logic:
references/pipeline_contract.md. A stdlib validator that reads a Design Passport and reports
the next gate and whether it is fail-closed: scripts/passport.py.
The Design Passport
One YAML artifact, created at entry and appended by each gate. The orchestrator never overwrites a
prior gate's fields; it only advances the stage and dispatches the next gate.
research_question: <text>
stage: <design | measurement | sampling | analysis | inference | done>
design_type: <set by design-gate>
identifying_assumption: <set by design-gate>
claim_type: <causal | associational | descriptive>
constructs: [<appended by measurement-gate — quantitative>]
positionality: <appended by reflexivity-gate — qualitative>
trustworthiness: {credibility, transferability, dependability, confirmability} # reflexivity-gate
reflexivity_evidence: <appended by reflexivity-gate — qualitative>
sampling: {<appended by sampling-gate>}
analysis_module: [<chosen by the orchestrator from design_type / data>]
claims: [<audited by inference-gate>]
gate_log: [{gate: design, verdict: PASS|WARN|BLOCK, note: ...}, ...]
Gate verdict semantics
- PASS — the gate's discipline is satisfied; advance.
- WARN — an advisory issue; advance with the caveat recorded in
gate_logand surfaced in the final report (default for measurement/sampling when non-fatal). - BLOCK — fail-closed; the pipeline cannot advance until resolved. Design-gate BLOCKs when no design/assumption can be named; inference-gate BLOCKs when a claim exceeds the design/sample.
Self-Check Before Advancing a Stage
- Has the current stage's gate emitted a verdict recorded in
gate_log? - If the verdict is BLOCK, has it been resolved (not bypassed) before advancing?
- Is the analysis module chosen from
design_type, not from the user's tool preference? - Does the Passport still carry every upstream field (nothing overwritten)?
References
references/pipeline_contract.md— stage-by-stage contract, verdict rules, analysis-module routing logic, worked run.scripts/passport.py— stdlib Design Passport validator / next-gate reporter.
Part of the AlterLab Academic Skills suite.