A skill your agent uses when designing studies for a Developmental Psychology (APA) manuscript so they can actually support a developmental-change claim.

MITAuto-check passedResearch & Science

Install Devpsych Study Design

skills CLI
$ npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill devpsych-study-design -a claude-code

Project install by default; add -g for ~/.claude/skills/.

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills devpsych-study-design --agent claude-code

Project scope by default; add --scope user for a personal install. Needs GitHub CLI 2.90.0 or later (public preview).

Manual copy
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills.git skills-src && mkdir -p .claude/skills && cp -r skills-src/Developmental-Psychology-Skills/skills/devpsych-study-design .claude/skills/devpsych-study-design && rm -rf skills-src

Use ~/.claude/skills/ instead of .claude/skills for a personal install. The folder must contain SKILL.md.

Claude Code skills documentation · loads skills from .claude/skills/

Facts

Skill name
devpsych-study-design
GitHub stars
1.2k
Token cost
~1.6k tokens
SKILL.md length
567 words
Files
1
Skills in repo
2,387
Repo updated
First seen
Licence
MIT

At a glance

A skill your agent uses when designing studies for a Developmental Psychology (APA) manuscript so they can actually support a developmental-change claim.

  • Works in 6 steps: Match the design to the change claim. → Address age vs. cohort. For any age… → Plan for measurement invariance. The… → …
  • Designing studies for a Developmental Psychology (APA) manuscript so they can actually support a developmental-change claim
  • SKILL.md covers When to trigger, Developmental design standards, Pre-data lockdown checklist… and Sample-size justification —…, plus 4 more sections
  • Instructions only: no scripts, shell commands, URLs or credentials in SKILL.md

What it does

Devpsych Study Design is an agent skill from brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills. Use when designing studies for a Developmental Psychology (APA) manuscript so they can actually support a developmental-change claim. Covers age-appropriate experimental and longitudinal designs, age vs. cohort confounds, attrition, measurement invariance across ages, sample-size justification, and ethics with minors and vulnerable populations. Strengthens the design and pre-analysis plan; it does not write code.

Its SKILL.md is about 1.6k tokens, which your agent loads only when the skill is triggered. It is a single SKILL.md file with no bundled scripts.

It sits in Research & Science, covering Experimental design. The repository describes itself as: Journal-specific Claude Code/Codex skill packs covering mainstream journals — AER, QJE, Nature, Cell, 管理世界, 经济研究 & 200+ more — your fast track to getting published. | 覆盖主流期刊的… The licence is MIT.

When your agent uses it

  • Designing studies for a Developmental Psychology (APA) manuscript so they can actually support a developmental-change claim
  • Tasks that involve Experimental design

Example prompts

  • “/devpsych-study-design”

Workflow steps

6 steps, taken from the first numbered list in SKILL.md.

  1. Match the design to the change claim.
  2. Address age vs. cohort. For any age effect, say what could be cohort/era instead, and how the
  3. Plan for measurement invariance. The same instrument can mean different things at different ages.
  4. Plan for attrition. Estimate expected dropout, design retention, pre-specify the missing-data
  5. Justify sample size. Power for the change parameter you care about — a growth slope, an
  6. Age-appropriate ethics and validity. Child assent plus parental/guardian consent;

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit 932eb23. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.

  • Tool permissions

    Pre-approves nothing: there is no allowed-tools line, so your agent's usual permission prompts apply.

    From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

  • Runs code

    No scripts in the folder and no shell commands in SKILL.md.

    From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.

  • Network

    No URLs in SKILL.md.

    From URLs in SKILL.md, links to its own repository left out.

  • Credentials

    Names no API keys, tokens, secrets or passwords.

    From names ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY or _PASSWORD in SKILL.md.

Context cost

Devpsych Study Design loads about 1.6k tokens when it runs. Until then it costs about 110 tokens; SKILL.md has 567 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it
~110
When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches
~1.6k

Estimates: characters ÷ 4, the usual rule of thumb; real counts depend on the model's tokenizer. Scripts and assets cost tokens only if the agent reads them.

Safety

Auto-check passed

The automated check found no risky patterns in SKILL.md.

Automated static check — not a guarantee. Review scripts before installing. It scans the text of SKILL.md for risky patterns (piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files, hidden Unicode, destructive commands); files beside SKILL.md are not scanned.

SKILL.md

The full file from brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills at commit 932eb23, republished under its MIT licence (© brycewang-stanford). 567 words, ~1,578 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/devpsych-study-design/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder).
name
devpsych-study-design
description
Use when designing studies for a Developmental Psychology (APA) manuscript so they can actually support a developmental-change claim. Covers age-appropriate experimental and longitudinal designs, age vs. cohort confounds, attrition, measurement invariance across ages, sample-size justification, and ethics with minors and vulnerable populations. Strengthens the design and pre-analysis plan; it does not write code.

Study Design (devpsych-study-design)

A developmental design must support a claim about change, not just measure something at different ages. Developmental Psychology reviewers probe the four threats that are specific to this field: age vs. cohort confounds, attrition, measurement invariance across ages, and age-appropriate ethics and task validity. This skill hardens the design before data collection.

When to trigger

  • Planning a cross-sectional, longitudinal, accelerated, micro-genetic, or experimental developmental study
  • Writing a preregistration / pre-analysis plan for developmental work
  • A reviewer questioned age confounds, attrition, invariance, power, or ethics with minors
  • Justifying sample size for a growth model or an age interaction

Developmental design standards

  1. Match the design to the change claim.
    • Cross-sectional age comparison: cheap, but age is confounded with cohort and with selection/era; you can describe age differences, not within-person change.
    • Longitudinal: supports within-person change but introduces attrition and retest effects.
    • Accelerated longitudinal (cohort-sequential): overlapping age cohorts to cover a wide span fast — state the convergence assumption.
    • Micro-genetic: dense repeated observation to catch the process of change; justify sampling rate.
  2. Address age vs. cohort. For any age effect, say what could be cohort/era instead, and how the design (or covariates, or a sequential design) addresses it. Do not call a cross-sectional age difference "development" without this.
  3. Plan for measurement invariance. The same instrument can mean different things at different ages. Pre-specify a configural → metric → scalar invariance test across ages/waves; interpret change only at the level of invariance you establish (handoff to devpsych-data-analysis).
  4. Plan for attrition. Estimate expected dropout, design retention, pre-specify the missing-data model (FIML/MI) and an attrition (MCAR/MAR) analysis comparing completers vs. dropouts.
  5. Justify sample size. Power for the change parameter you care about — a growth slope, an age × condition interaction, or a cross-lagged path — not just a group mean difference. State the assumed effect size and its source.
  6. Age-appropriate ethics and validity. Child assent plus parental/guardian consent; age-appropriate measures (a task valid at 4 and at 8); special protections for vulnerable populations.
Show full SKILL.md (238 more words)Show less

Pre-data lockdown checklist (developmental)

Degree of freedomLock before data?Where it lives
Hypotheses + developmental form (slope/interaction)yespreregistration
Age bands / waves / spacingyespreregistration
Measurement-invariance test planyesanalysis plan
Inclusion/exclusion + attrition handling (FIML/MI)yespreregistration
Time coding / centering for growth modelsyesanalysis plan
Covariates (incl. cohort/SES) and model formyesanalysis plan
Exploratory trajectory analysesallowed, labeledreported separately

Sample-size justification — worked example (illustrative)

For a three-wave latent-growth study (ages 4, 6, 8), justify N for the slope and the scaffolding × time interaction, not a t-test.

Target parameter: latent slope variance + scaffolding × time interaction.
Method: Monte Carlo power simulation (lavaan/Mplus) under a plausible
        growth model with 20% per-wave attrition and FIML.
Result: N = 300 at wave 1 gives ~85% power for the interaction at the
        smallest developmentally meaningful slope difference; precision
        goal is a slope-CI half-width small enough to sign the trajectory.
Invariance: configural→metric→scalar tested across waves before growth is
        interpreted; partial scalar invariance plan if a few intercepts differ.
Attrition: MAR assumed; completers-vs-dropouts compared on baseline covariates.

Design-stage reviewer pushback and the venue fix

  • "This is a cohort effect, not development" → add a sequential element or model cohort; soften to age-difference language if you cannot separate them.
  • "Is the construct the same at every age?" → pre-specify and report measurement invariance; interpret change only at the invariance level achieved.
  • "Attrition could bias the trajectory" → report the attrition analysis and a principled missing-data model, not listwise deletion.
  • "Task isn't valid across this age range" → justify age-appropriateness or use age-anchored measures.

Anti-patterns

  • Calling a cross-sectional age difference "developmental change"
  • Interpreting trajectories without testing measurement invariance
  • Listwise deletion / ignoring differential attrition
  • Powering for a mean difference when the claim is a growth slope or an age interaction
  • Consent without child assent; one task used across ages it is not valid for

Output format

【Design】cross-sectional / longitudinal / accelerated / micro-genetic / experiment
【Change claim supportable】age vs. cohort addressed? [Y/N]
【Invariance plan】configural→metric→scalar across ages/waves? [Y/N]
【Attrition plan】expected dropout + missing-data model + attrition analysis? [Y/N]
【Sample size】N + power for the change parameter (slope/interaction)
【Ethics】consent + child assent + age-appropriate measures? [Y/N]
【Next】devpsych-data-analysis

Supplementary resources

© brycewang-stanford, MIT. Rendered from Markdown: HTML in the file is shown as text, images as links, and headings moved down two levels. Raw file

Files

Just SKILL.md in Developmental-Psychology-Skills/skills/devpsych-study-design of brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills.

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 932eb23

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Questions about Devpsych Study Design

What does Devpsych Study Design do?

A skill your agent uses when designing studies for a Developmental Psychology (APA) manuscript so they can actually support a developmental-change claim. Devpsych Study Design is an agent skill from brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills. Use when designing studies for a Developmental Psychology (APA) manuscript so they can actually support a developmental-change claim.

When should I use Devpsych Study Design?

Devpsych Study Design fits situations like: designing studies for a Developmental Psychology (APA) manuscript so they can actually support a developmental-change claim; tasks that involve Experimental design.

How do I install Devpsych Study Design in Claude Code?

Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill devpsych-study-design -a claude-code`. Or copy the skill folder (Developmental-Psychology-Skills/skills/devpsych-study-design in brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills) into .claude/skills/devpsych-study-design in your project. Claude Code loads it when a task matches its description.

How do I install Devpsych Study Design in Codex?

Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill devpsych-study-design -a codex`. Or copy the skill folder (Developmental-Psychology-Skills/skills/devpsych-study-design in brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills) into .agents/skills/devpsych-study-design in your project. Codex loads it when a task matches its description.

Can I use Devpsych Study Design in Cursor, Gemini CLI or GitHub Copilot?

Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot and OpenCode also load SKILL.md folders. With the skills CLI, run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill devpsych-study-design -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/devpsych-study-design, .gemini/skills/devpsych-study-design, .github/skills/devpsych-study-design and .opencode/skills/devpsych-study-design in your project.

What does Devpsych Study Design need to run?

SKILL.md names no scripts, command-line tools or credentials: Devpsych Study Design is instructions for the agent only.

Does Devpsych Study Design access the network?

SKILL.md contains no URLs. Any network use would come from the scripts or tools the agent runs. This is read from the text; nothing was executed.

Is Devpsych Study Design safe to install?

Our automated static check of SKILL.md found no risky patterns, such as piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files or hidden Unicode. It is not a guarantee. Review the folder before installing.

What licence does Devpsych Study Design use?

Devpsych Study Design is published under the MIT licence (the repository's licence). It allows redistribution, so the full SKILL.md is shown on this page.

How many tokens does Devpsych Study Design use?

About 1.6k tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 6.3k characters). Agents keep only the skill's name and description in context until a task matches; then they load SKILL.md in full.

What are the alternatives to Devpsych Study Design?

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Who maintains Devpsych Study Design?

brycewang-stanford (a GitHub user) maintains it in brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills, which has 1,219 GitHub stars. The repository holds 2,387 skills in this directory. The repository was last updated on September 27, 2026.

Source: brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills on GitHub. Facts on this page come from the repository at the commit we read; the author's words are quoted as theirs.