Survey Instrument Designer Agent Skill

Design survey instruments: questions, scales, flow, social desirability.

Context cost
4.4k tokensestimated from the bundle, loaded when it triggers
Bundle
1 file · 17.6 kBtext throughout, nothing executable
Licence
Source-availablethe author’s own terms
Last change
—no release on file
Servers it uses
Noneruns standalone

What it does

Design survey instruments: questions, scales, flow, social desirability.

What this skill changes about the agent has not been set out here as a list. Its SKILL.md, shown below, says it in the author’s own words.

data science
Filed under

Research

The skill itself

A skill is instructions the model reads, so you can see what you are getting: below is the start of its SKILL.md. The front matter loads with every session, the body loads when the skill triggers, and the whole file comes with the install.

SKILL.md17.6 kB · preview
--- name: survey-design argument-hint: "[describe your survey question or design challenge]" ---
7# Survey Instrument Designer
8
9## Instructions
10
11### 1. Question Construction
12- **Item-Specific Wording:** Frame questions with item-specific response options rather than agree/disagree, true/false, or yes/no formats. Instead of "Do you agree that immigration benefits the economy?" use "How much does immigration benefit or harm the economy?" with a substantive scale. This reduces acquiescence bias and forces respondents to process the item content (Stantcheva 2023).
13- **Open-Ended vs. Closed-Ended:** Use open-ended questions to discover respondent frames and vocabulary before designing closed-ended items. Deploy open-ended items in pilots to generate response categories, then convert to closed-ended for the main study. In the main survey, reserve open-ended items for exploratory or manipulation-check purposes.
14- **Behavioral vs. Attitudinal:** Prefer behavioral measures (what respondents would do) over attitudinal measures (what respondents feel) when the research question concerns real-world consequences. Attitudinal items are appropriate when the construct of interest is itself an attitude, but note that attitude-behavior gaps are well documented.
15- **Avoid Double-Barreled Questions:** Each item should measure exactly one construct. "Do you support increased immigration and refugee resettlement?" conflates two distinct policy domains. Split into separate items.
16- **Avoid Leading and Loaded Language:** Avoid terms that signal a "correct" answer or carry strong normative connotations. Pilot-test whether question framing shifts responses -- if it does, the wording is a treatment, not a measure (Stantcheva 2023).
17- **Numeric vs. Qualitative Response Options:** For cross-country or cross-group comparisons, prefer qualitative response options ("a lot," "somewhat," "not at all") over exact numeric quantities. Specific numbers carry different informational weight across contexts -- "$50,000 income" means different things in the US and South Korea (Stantcheva 2023).
18
19### 2. Scale Design
20- **Number of Scale Points:** 5- to 7-point scales are a common convention for attitudinal items, trading off discrimination against cognitive load. Fewer points can lose meaningful variance; more points may not add measurement precision. Reliability depends more on whether each point is meaningfully labeled than on the raw count; assess test-retest and internal consistency for the target construct rather than defaulting to a fixed number. For knowledge or factual questions, binary or categorical formats are often sufficient.
21- **Labeled vs. Endpoint-Only:** Label all scale points when feasible. Fully labeled scales reduce respondent uncertainty about the meaning of intermediate values and improve cross-respondent comparability.
22- **Unipolar vs. Bipolar:** Match scale polarity to the construct. Bipolar scales (oppose--support) suit constructs with a natural midpoint. Unipolar scales (not at all--extremely) suit constructs with a natural zero point (e.g., frequency, intensity).
23- **Feeling Thermometers:** Use with caution. Feeling thermometers (0--100) introduce measurement noise because respondents interpret the scale differently. They are useful for relative comparisons across targets within respondents but unreliable for absolute-level interpretation across respondents.
24- **Index Construction:** When combining multiple items into an index, assess internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha, McDonald's omega, or composite reliability) and report the method used alongside the chosen threshold and its rationale. The historical alpha > 0.70 convention is a starting point, not a standard; omega is generally preferred for multidimensional scales. For population-based survey experiments specifically, multi-item indices of the dependent variable are strongly preferred over single-item measures because heterogeneous samples inflate within-group variance (Mutz 2011). Pre-specify index construction rules in the pre-analysis plan; do not construct indices after seeing the data (see also methods-reporting).
25- **Balanced Scales:** Include equal numbers of positively and negatively worded options or directional anchors. Unbalanced scales (three positive options, one negative) bias responses toward the overrepresented direction.
This is a preview of SKILL.md. Download or install the skill to get the whole thing.
In the file
SKILL.md2,358 words
Files1
LicenceSource-available
Why you can read it

Nothing in a skill executes. The client loads the text and the model follows it, so a skill can be audited the way a runbook is — by reading it.

What it costs in context

Skills are not billed by the call. They are paid for in context: every token the instructions occupy is a token your code, your diff and your conversation cannot use. Here is what this one takes and when it takes it.

≈50
always loaded
The name and description, so the model knows the skill exists and when to reach for it.
4,350
on trigger
The instruction body, read only when the skill fires.
2.2%
of a 200k window
Ten skills this size would take about 22% of the window before you open a file.
050k100k150k200k context window

4.4k tokens, estimated from the bundle at four bytes to the token, held for the rest of the session once it triggers. Heavy. Teams tend to install this one per project rather than globally, and load it only when the job comes up.

Servers bill, skills cost

A server charges by the month. A skill charges once per session, in context, and then keeps charging it for as long as the session lives.

Before and after

The same question, put to the same model twice: once as it comes, and once with these instructions loaded.

No worked example has been published for this skill yet.

The procedure it runs

The procedure has not been set out here step by step. It is in the body of its SKILL.md: the start of it is shown above, and the whole file comes with the install.

Prose, not code

These steps are written for a model to follow, not executed by a runtime. It can still be told to skip one, and it will say so when it does.

Servers it uses

None. This skill calls no MCP servers at all.

Everything it needs is in the instructions, so it works in a project with nothing connected — the model reads the file and changes how it works with what it can already reach.

Its SKILL.md does not declare which tools it asks the agent for, so what it touches is whatever the instructions themselves ask for — read them before you install it.

What it asks for
Writes filesnot declared
Network accessnot declared

This SKILL.md carries no allowed-tools line, so neither is declared. A skill grants no permissions of its own — it can only ask for tools your client already has.

What it will not do

Every skill is narrow, and the useful ones say where they stop. These are the jobs this one is the wrong tool for.

What this skill is not for has not been published here. Nothing is implied by that: it is a section the author has not filled in.

What is in the bundle

1 file, 17.6 kB on disk. A bundle is text throughout: the instructions the model reads, plus the templates it fills in.

  • SKILL.md17.6 kB
What is not in it

No dependencies and nothing executable: a skill is text the agent reads, so the bundle is 1 file you can review in full before installing. The Source-available licence covers the templates and examples as well as the instructions.

Install

Installing copies the bundle into your project. Nothing runs at install time — the files sit on disk until the model reads them.

# Survey Instrument Designer · 4.4k tokens when loaded · macOS, Linux mkdir -p .claude/skills && t=$(mktemp -d) && curl -fsSL -o "$t/bundle.tar.gz" https://mcprush.com/api/skills/survey-instrument-designer/bundle.tar.gz && tar -xzf "$t/bundle.tar.gz" -C "$t" && [ -d "$t/survey-instrument-designer" ] && { [ ! -e .claude/skills/survey-instrument-designer ] || { mv .claude/skills/survey-instrument-designer "$t/.previous" && echo "Previous copy moved to $t/.previous"; }; } && mv "$t/survey-instrument-designer" .claude/skills/ && echo "Installed .claude/skills/survey-instrument-designer"
On Windows, or any OS with Node 20+
npx mcprush@latest skill add brycewang-stanford/survey-instrument-designer

Windows PowerShell says 'running scripts is disabled on this system'? Run Set-ExecutionPolicy -Scope CurrentUser RemoteSigned once, or type npx.cmd instead of npx (codex.cmd, gemini.cmd, grok.cmd likewise). PowerShell 7 needs neither. Writes to .claude/skills/survey-instrument-designer/ in the current project. For every project instead, run mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && t=$(mktemp -d) && curl -fsSL -o "$t/bundle.tar.gz" https://mcprush.com/api/skills/survey-instrument-designer/bundle.tar.gz && tar -xzf "$t/bundle.tar.gz" -C "$t" && [ -d "$t/survey-instrument-designer" ] && { [ ! -e ~/.claude/skills/survey-instrument-designer ] || { mv ~/.claude/skills/survey-instrument-designer "$t/.previous" && echo "Previous copy moved to $t/.previous"; }; } && mv "$t/survey-instrument-designer" ~/.claude/skills/ && echo "Installed ~/.claude/skills/survey-instrument-designer" (macOS, Linux) — or add --global to the npx line. The curl line replaces .claude/skills/survey-instrument-designer/ only after the download succeeds, so files left there by another skill of the same name, or by an older release, do not mix in. A copy already there is moved aside, not deleted, and the line prints where. It appears as survey-design in Gemini CLI, Codex, Copilot and Grok (its own name); Claude Code lists it by the folder name, survey-instrument-designer.

Which clients pick it up on their own

A skill is a folder of text. Most of these read a skills folder and pick it up without being told; the rest take the same folder another way — an upload in the app, a parameter on an API call — and then choose it by its description just the same.

Claude Code.claude/skills/
Claude DesktopCustomize › Skills
ChatGPTSkills › Create › Upload
Cursor.cursor/skills/
VS Code.github/skills/
Codex CLI.agents/skills/
Gemini CLI.gemini/skills/
Grok Build.grok/skills/
Microsoft CopilotSkills › Upload a skill
PerplexityComputer › Skills › Upload a skill
DeepSeek Harness.dsh/skills/
Zed.agents/skills/
Devin Desktop.devin/skills/
Windsurf (legacy).windsurf/skills/
OpenAI Agents SDKInstructions or sandbox Skills
HTTP / APIa request parameter
This release
Versionnot versioned
Publishedno release date on file
PriceFree
Referencebrycewang-stanford/survey-instrument-designer

Versions

Its author publishes no version number, so there is nothing here to pin to: what you install is the folder as it stands today. Instructions change more often than APIs do — a skill can be rewritten entirely without anything it depends on moving.

Pinning

Nothing to pin to: this skill carries no version number of its own. What you install is what the folder holds on the day you install it.

Reviews

—no reviews yet

Nobody has reviewed this skill yet. The rating is the mean of the reviews written here, so there is none until somebody writes the first.

Sign in to review it

A review is tied to an account so it can be answered, edited and taken down by the person who wrote it.

Sign in
Who can post

Anybody with an account, one review each. It carries the version that was current when you wrote it, and the publisher may reply once.

Publisher
Servers0
Claim this skill