narrative-buildinglisted

# Scientific Narrative Builder **Related skills.** This skill composes with `hypothesis-building` (where the "Why" funnel lands as a falsifiable "If-Then" with a named estimand), `methods-reporting` (where the design the narrative promises gets documented to APSA/JARS/DA-RT standards), and `pre-registration-writing` (where the narrative locks in before data collection). ## Workflow Author or audit an introduction by walking these five steps in order. Each step has a specific output; do not proceed until the prior step's output exists in the draft. See `references/example-funnel.md` for a worked example. ### Step 1 — Why: establish the substantive motivation Output: one or two paragraphs naming the real-world social/political tension the study addresses, the specific "invisible" the design will reveal, and the analytical joint where existing theory is silent or conflicted. Do not frame the motivation as a gap-in-literature; frame it as a stake in the world. - **Identify the "Invisible":** Treat surveys and experiments not just as data collection, but as a process to uncover "invisible factors", specifically perceptions, knowledge, beliefs, and reasoning that administrative data cannot capture. - **Carve the Analytical Joints:** Do not settle for a broad topic. Identify the specific analytical joint or tension where existing theory is silent or conflicted -- "creativity in design is grounded in a capacity to carve a problem at its analytical joints" (Sniderman 2018). The i