brycewang-stanford Developmental Psychology Workflow Router (devpsych-workflow)
The orchestrator for a Developmental Psychology submission. This APA journal publishes empirical work on development across the life span, and its defining demand is a credible claim about developmental change — age effects, within-person change, or trajectories — reported under APA 7th + JARS, with masked review and Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) expectations. The router makes sure the developmental claim, the design, and the open-science package are all handled, then dispatches.
When to trigger
- Starting a new Developmental Psychology paper and unsure where to begin
- Mid-project and unsure which skill applies next
- Choosing a length tier (brief report vs. larger report vs. multi-study/longitudinal report)
- Returning with a decision letter (route to
devpsych-rebuttal)
First question: what kind of developmental claim and design?
| Situation | Design | Route note |
|---|---|---|
| Age differences at one time point | Cross-sectional | name the age/cohort confound early (devpsych-study-design) |
| Within-person change over time | Longitudinal / cohort | attrition + measurement invariance are load-bearing |
| Process of change in close-up | Micro-genetic | dense sampling; justify granularity |
| Causal manipulation with minors | Experiment | ethics/assent + age-appropriate task validity |
| Re-using a large panel (e.g., NICHD, ECLS) | Secondary analysis | declare provenance, derived measures, version |
Routing map (stage → skill)
Idea / fit + age scope? → devpsych-topic-selection
Developmental theory + hypotheses? → devpsych-theory-and-hypotheses
Where does it sit in the field? → devpsych-literature-positioning
Design / power / invariance / age? → devpsych-study-design
Growth-curve / multilevel / SEM? → devpsych-data-analysis
Trajectory exhibits (APA)? → devpsych-tables-figures
APA 7th + Public Significance? → devpsych-writing-style
Data/materials + preregistration? → devpsych-open-science-and-transparency
How will it be judged (masked)? → devpsych-review-process
Ready to submit (Editorial Mgr)? → devpsych-submission
Got an R&R / decision? → devpsych-rebuttal
Default order
topic-selection → theory-and-hypotheses → literature-positioning → study-design → data-analysis → tables-figures → writing-style → open-science-and-transparency → review-process → submission → rebuttal
If the design is prospective and confirmatory, pull study-design and open-science-and-transparency
forward so a preregistration and a sample-size justification exist before data collection.
Worked micro-example — routing a live project (illustrative)
A team has a three-wave accelerated longitudinal study of self-regulation (ages 4, 6, 8; some attrition), fitting growth curves, and a reviewer-anticipated worry about measurement invariance. The router walks them:
Claim: within-person growth in effortful control, age 4→8.
Design: longitudinal/cohort (accelerated) → invariance + attrition are central.
Entry: not idea-stage; they are at design hardening + analysis.
Route: study-design (invariance test plan; attrition/FIML; age-vs-cohort)
→ data-analysis (latent growth / multilevel; time coding)
→ tables-figures (spaghetti + mean-trajectory plot, CIs)
→ writing-style (APA 7th; Public Significance Statement)
→ open-science-and-transparency (data/scripts; prereg if confirmatory)
→ submission (masked preflight) ; on R&R → rebuttal.
Flag: test longitudinal measurement invariance BEFORE interpreting change.
Stage-triage table (symptom → skill)
| What the author says | Stage | Route to |
|---|---|---|
| "Is age difference enough, or do I need change?" | fit | devpsych-topic-selection |
| "Reviewer: is your construct the same at every age?" | design/analysis | devpsych-study-design + devpsych-data-analysis |
| "Cross-sectional age effect — but is it cohort?" | design | devpsych-study-design |
| "Where does the Public Significance Statement go?" | writing | devpsych-writing-style |
| "Do I need to share data and preregister?" | transparency | devpsych-open-science-and-transparency |
| "I have an R&R" | revision | devpsych-rebuttal |
Routing pitfalls specific to this venue
- Sending an age-comparison straight to
devpsych-data-analysiswithout first separating age from cohort and confirming measurement invariance — the change claim collapses if the construct shifts. - Deferring
devpsych-open-science-and-transparency; under TOP, deposits and a preregistration are far cheaper to build before data than to retrofit at acceptance.
Anti-patterns
- Treating a cross-sectional age difference as developmental change without addressing cohort confounds
- Interpreting trajectories before establishing longitudinal measurement invariance
- Forgetting the Public Significance Statement (an APA requirement on the abstract page)
- Ignoring masked-review anonymization in the manuscript or in shared links
Output format
【Stage】idea / theory / positioning / design / analysis / exhibits / writing / transparency / review / submit / rebut
【Design】cross-sectional / longitudinal-cohort / micro-genetic / experiment / secondary
【Route to】devpsych-<skill>
【Why】one line
【Then】the next skill after that
Supplementary resources
../../resources/external_tools.md— longitudinal/SEM tooling, power, preregistration, developmental data archives../../resources/official-source-map.md— official Developmental Psychology URLs behind every fact in this pack