HCD.18:4.5 - Make the specification usable by another evaluator
The following content completes an A.19.ECS specification. A table is optional; the values are not.
| Specification content | What the evaluator must be able to recover |
|---|---|
| Object, use, and qualification | Exact material or material family, evaluation grain, audience prerequisites, tasks, assistance, subject/source state, consuming decision, and window in which the basis remains valid. |
| Fit and contrasts | In-scope adequate and deficient examples, outside-kind or outside-use example, entry decision, and the disposition of a forced invocation on an incompatible object. |
| Characteristics and scales | Selected properties, their applicability, value domains and scale types, polarity, anchors, any floor or exceptional-value condition, and protected trade-offs. |
| Evidence and calibration | Coordinate-specific evidence minima, qualified subject criteria, actual tasks and competing answers, admissible inference, missingness, known contrasts, and the needed reader or evaluator calibration. |
| Result and evidence payload | Every selected coordinate with value or missingness; material locus, task/observation, available and actual help, adjacent-value grounds, limiting example, repair, and claim limits. Preserve the task, criterion, first answer, and later assistance when they carry the inference. |
| Decisions and continuation | Supported-use, repair-needed, insufficient-evidence, disputed-criterion, and fit-defect meanings as needed; stop, reopen, and next-evidence conditions; the starting result for E.23 if improvement is needed. |
| Neighbouring claims and comparisons | Exact exits for human performance, transfer, retention, source fidelity, or production history. If selection among alternatives is live, the common comparison basis and E.22 use, including incomparable cases. |
A complete specification need not already have every observation that its later use requires. It must state the missing observations and prevent a stronger result from being claimed without them. Conversely, a calibrated illustration does not make every future application adequate.
An incompatible object normally stops before invocation. If an invocation is nevertheless required, return an explicit fit defect and the blocked conclusion. If a selected coordinate becomes unevaluable during an in-scope application, return its evidence or criterion defect in the complete result. Neither case authorizes silently dropping that coordinate.