Skills Data Science Guidelines for Academic Tables and Figures

Guidelines for Academic Tables and Figures

v20260724
etp-tables-figures
This guide details the best practices for creating high-impact exhibits for scholarly manuscripts, particularly in Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice (ETP). It covers structuring empirical results (using magnitude over significance stars), developing vital theoretical mechanism figures, and presenting qualitative data using structures like the Gioia model, all adhering to APA standards.
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Overview

Tables & Figures (etp-tables-figures)

When to trigger

  • Your results tables are dense walls of coefficients a reviewer cannot read
  • The paper has no figure that shows the theoretical model / mechanism
  • A qualitative paper lacks a data-structure figure (1st-order → 2nd-order → dimensions)
  • Tables use significance asterisks as the headline and omit effect sizes / CIs
  • Exhibits are not APA-formatted or appear at the end rather than near their callout

What ETP exhibits must do

At ETP, exhibits carry two loads: the empirical (do the numbers support the claim?) and the theoretical (can a reader see the mechanism?). The journal's strong-theory identity means a conceptual/mechanism figure is expected in most papers — a diagram of the hypothesized chain (antecedents → entrepreneurial mechanism → outcomes, with moderators/mediators) — and for inductive work a Gioia data structure is essentially mandatory. Format to APA: descriptive titles, defined abbreviations, notes that make the table self-contained.

The exhibit suite by paper type

Paper type Expected core exhibits
Deductive quantitative Theoretical model figure; descriptives + correlations; main regression table; interaction/moderation plots
Survival / event-history Theoretical figure; Kaplan–Meier curves; hazard table with hazard ratios + CIs
SEM Theoretical model figure; measurement model (loadings, AVE, CR); structural model with standardized paths
Inductive / qualitative Gioia data structure; process model figure; quotation table linked to informants
Mixed methods Data structure (qual phase) + regression/SEM (quant phase) + an integrating figure

Make results tables earn their space

  • Lead with magnitude, not stars. Report coefficients with standard errors and, where possible, confidence intervals; give effect sizes (hazard ratios, marginal effects, standardized betas). Significance asterisks may appear by APA convention, but they cannot be the story.
  • One question per table. A reader should know what claim each table tests from its title.
  • Show the moderation, don't just tabulate it. An interaction is best read as a simple-slopes plot; a table of products rarely communicates the contingency.
  • Correlation tables: include means, SDs, and reliabilities on the diagonal for self-report constructs.

The mechanism figure is a contribution, not decoration

A clean theoretical model figure does triple duty: it states the hypotheses visually, signals the entrepreneurial mechanism (so a reviewer cannot mistake it for a generic-org model), and gives the reader a map for the results. Label the constructs with your entrepreneurial names (e.g., "affordable-loss reasoning," "socioemotional wealth"), not generic placeholders, and make moderators/mediators visually distinct.

Qualitative exhibits

The Gioia data structure is the trust contract for inductive ETP work: it shows the inductive chain from informant terms to theoretical dimensions. Pair it with a process-model figure (the dynamic "movie" of the static data structure) and a quotation table that ties evidence to dimensions and informants. Thin or absent data structures are a fast credibility loss.

Execution bridge (StatsPAI / Stata MCP)

Generate exhibits from the fitted result, not by retyping numbers (the usual source of body-vs-appendix drift). Full map: execution-with-mcp. ETP is entrepreneurship, where selection and survival bias are pervasive — foreground identification and selection corrections.

  • Tables: etable (multi-model columns) or did_summary_to_latex straight from the result_id.
  • Figures: plot_from_result / enhanced_event_study_plot / event_study_table — axis units and the SE/clustering note baked in.
  • Every note names the estimator + clustering and states the effect size in interpretable units.

See a full fitted-result → exhibit chain in the JF execution walkthrough.

Checklist

  • A theoretical/mechanism figure is present and labeled with entrepreneurial constructs
  • Inductive papers include a Gioia data structure and a process model
  • Results tables lead with magnitude (effect sizes, CIs), not asterisks alone
  • Interactions/moderations shown as plots, not just product terms
  • Correlation table reports means, SDs, and reliabilities
  • Every exhibit is self-contained (APA title + notes) and called out near its placement
  • No exhibit carries a claim the main text fails to make

Anti-patterns

  • No mechanism figure in a theory-forward paper
  • Asterisk-as-headline tables with no effect sizes or CIs
  • Generic-construct labels that let a reviewer recast the model as non-entrepreneurial
  • Interaction-as-table with no simple-slopes plot
  • Decorative figures that repeat the text without adding interpretive value
  • Thin/absent Gioia structure in an inductive submission

Worked vignette (illustrative)

A quantitative effectuation paper submits four dense regression tables, asterisks marking significance, and no figure. An ETP-ready exhibit suite reorganizes this. Add a theoretical model figure first: boxes labeled with the entrepreneurial constructs (affordable-loss reasoning → venture survival), market uncertainty drawn as a moderator on the path — so a reviewer immediately sees the mechanism is effectual, not generic risk-taking. Collapse the four tables into one descriptives-plus-correlations table (means, SDs, reliabilities on the diagonal) and one main results table that leads with hazard ratios and confidence intervals, with asterisks demoted to a footnote per APA. Replace the buried interaction term with a simple-slopes plot: two survival curves, high vs. low uncertainty, making the contingency legible at a glance. The result is fewer exhibits doing more work, each self-contained, and the mechanism visible to a reviewer in the first figure rather than reconstructed from a coefficient table.

Output format

【Journal】Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice
【Mechanism figure】present? entrepreneurial labels? Y/N
【Core exhibit suite】list matched to paper type
【Results table】leads with magnitude (effect size + CI)? Y/N
【Moderation】shown as simple-slopes plot? Y/N
【Qual exhibits】Gioia data structure + process model? (if applicable)
【APA + self-contained】titles/notes/abbrevs defined? Y/N
【Next skill】etp-writing-style
Info
Category Data Science
Name etp-tables-figures
Version v20260724
Size 6.93KB
Updated At 2026-07-28
Language