name: research-ideation description: Generate structured research questions, testable hypotheses, and empirical strategies from a topic or dataset. disable-model-invocation: true argument-hint: "[topic, phenomenon, or dataset description]" allowed-tools: ["Read", "Grep", "Glob", "Write"]
Research Ideation
Generate 3-5 research questions ordered from descriptive to causal.
Steps
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Understand context: Read CLAUDE.md and any relevant project files.
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Generate 3-5 research questions ordered by type:
- Descriptive: What are the stylized facts?
- Correlational: What patterns exist in the data?
- Causal: What is the effect of X on Y?
- Mechanism: Through what channel does X affect Y?
- Policy: What are the policy implications?
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For each question, develop:
- Testable hypothesis with expected sign/magnitude
- Identification strategy (DiD, IV, RDD, synthetic control, matching, etc.)
- Data requirements with availability assessment
- Key assumptions and their plausibility
- Potential pitfalls and how to address them
- 2-3 related papers
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Rank questions by feasibility and contribution in a summary table.
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Save output to
quality_reports/research_ideation_[sanitized_topic].md.
Principles
- Be creative but grounded in what's feasible
- Think like a referee: what would make this convincing?
- Consider data availability realistically
- Suggest specific datasets (FRED, Census, PSID, BLS, central bank data, etc.)