Define what the comparison can answer
Frame a question about the language in retrieved discussions, rather than the beliefs of an entire community. For example, examine how people describe soil problems and proposed remedies in gardening and a second community. Subreddit API supplies independent historical records, not an official or live Reddit feed. Availability, complete coverage and identical results on later requests are not guaranteed.
Begin with https://api.subredditapi.com/v1/search?q=soil&subreddit=gardening&limit=3. Read a few returned passages to decide whether the search term fits the research question. A record mentioning soil may discuss a failed experiment, ask for advice or quote another person. Those distinctions require local reading; the API does not classify intent or sentiment. The initial sample can also be empty and is still billable when successful.
Use /v1/subreddits with prefix to explore candidate community names, without treating its counts as a globally exact inventory or assuming alphabetical server order. Choose an available comparison community and make a separate request changing subreddit. Record how you chose it. A local alphabetical directory can organize candidate names, but does not demonstrate that the archive contains every relevant community or discussion.
Hold the selection rules constant
Record q, kind, dates and any min_score threshold before collecting comparison sets. Use post or comment for kind; avoid comparing posts in one group with comments in another without explaining that choice. from and to are YYYY-MM-DD dates in UTC, with to inclusive. These filters control retrieval conditions; matching them does not eliminate unequal archive coverage, missing context or truncation from the page limit.
min_score filters a numeric score and does not order records or measure how persuasive a passage is. If you use a threshold, explain which records it excludes. Consider whether different community voting practices may affect your selection. Returned _doc order is neither chronological nor relevance based. A locally sorted sample can describe the records you obtained, but cannot establish the complete sequence of a community discussion.
Plan a bounded page budget for each community: one request fetches at most 100 records and page ranges from 1 to 100. Preserve every received response and its filters before advancing local checkpoints. eq is an exact query total, gte a lower bound and unknown no reliable total, possibly null. None proves that all matches were downloaded. Date partitioning also does not guarantee disjoint or exhaustive sets.
Code the retrieved text and report the limits
Define a local coding scheme, such as drainage concerns, compost use or requests for evidence. These are hypothetical labels, not findings about either community. Keep an ambiguous or uncodable category and retain the passage behind each coding decision. If you calculate word frequencies locally, state the denominator and how you handle missing text, duplicates and repeated authors. Raw counts from differently sized selections should not be presented as population prevalence.
Responses are flat. Group received parent_id or link_id values locally only when present, and mark missing ancestors instead of inferring a complete conversation. Neither field is a supported query filter. Keep raw responses, coding rules and a version of the analysis code. Repeating processing on saved inputs tests your own workflow; requesting the same remote pages again does not guarantee a reproducible archive snapshot.
Budget successful samples, pages and retries at one credit each, including empty results. Handle 400 for invalid parameters, 401 for key problems, 402 for insufficient credits and 429 for rate limits. Invalid requests do not debit; upstream failures refund reservations. A client interruption can follow a billable success. /v1/status confirms only HTTP responsiveness and static scope. Consult Documentation, Pricing and Get API key before expanding the study, and describe findings as observations from bounded retrieved sets.
