RMP.2 — Choose a Criticism-Bearing Research Design or Stop

Type: Research Method Practice practitioner method pattern

RMP.2:0 - Use This When

Use this pattern when a compatible ResearchQuestionBrief and qualified current frame already exist, but it is still unclear whether additional evidence-producing Work is useful and, if so, which design family can expose the error that matters. Begin by testing the current evidence against the brief’s answer condition: what it must establish for this use. If new Work could still be useful, compare the real design-or-stop options on question fit, feasible criticism, validity threats, constraints, expected information gain, and supplied owner results.

Return one ResearchDesignDisposition for the present selection boundary: EvidenceSufficientStop when evidence already answers the use; ResearchDesignDecision when a useful feasible strategy is selected, with only genuinely invariant PostSelectionNeed items remaining; ResearchDesignHold when a named missing result prevents a particular selection still needed; or QualifiedNoNewStudy when the current allocation question is answered by selecting no new study while preserving an insufficient or bounded answer. A design is complete only when no missing construct relation, source admissibility, measurement, access, protection, authority or other load-bearing value can overturn its family, criticism or feasibility.

The practical gain is a useful answer about the current research commitment: use sufficient evidence, select a justified study, identify what still prevents selection, or finish with a bounded answer and no new study. A selected design is a justified strategy, not a protocol, performed Work, authorization, or promise that the desired answer will obtain.

Do not use RMP.2 to qualify an ambiguous “research” request, repair a weak current frame, write operational definitions, issue safety or ethics approval, procure access, engineer a reusable Method, execute a study, analyze records, or choose the receiving action. Return those questions to their direct owners.

RMP.2:0.1 - Working Terms

Recognition is cheap: a team has a qualified question and an open choice about further inquiry. Assurance is stricter: real options address the same brief, a selected strategy has its load-bearing owner results, and the returned disposition keeps evidence adequacy separate from the current research commitment.

RMP.2:1 - Problem Frame

Research questions do not determine one universal design. The same practical use can be served by a controlled comparison, a field observation, a qualitative account of situated mechanism, historical source criticism, a computational challenge, a synthesis of an existing corpus, a mixed composition, or no new study at all. Each exposes different errors and requires different observations, sources, access, and domain judgements.

A design family can also change when one external fact changes. If an accelerated condition alters the failure mechanism, an experimental comparison may need a different relation or may cease to bear on the field claim. If a salinity sensor is invalid or a site is inaccessible, a proposed field design may collapse or give way to a source synthesis. If archival provenance is unresolved, the relevant historical contrast may be impossible. Calling such values “details to settle later” creates a fictitious design.

The opposite error is endless pre-design elaboration. Exact file names, trace serialization, local schedule placement, or other bounded implementation choices can remain after selection when they cannot change the family or criticism logic. RMP.2 needs a test that separates those needs from load-bearing unknowns.

RMP.2:2 - Problem

Method prestige often chooses the design before the question’s criticism demand is understood. Randomization, statistical significance, interviews, simulation, triangulation, systematic review, or AI-assisted synthesis becomes a ritual answer rather than one candidate relation. The resulting design may be detailed but unable to expose the error that matters.

Premature selection hides missing owner results: a construct is not related to an observable, a source is inadmissible, an instrument cannot discriminate the change, a site cannot be entered safely, participants cannot be recruited legitimately, or the authority needed for the proposed Work does not exist. The team continues into protocol work and discovers too late that a different design—or no study—was required.

Indiscriminate holding wastes the other way. If a remaining need only assigns an already-required record locator or selects a schedule within a qualified fixed window, holding the family decision adds no epistemic protection. The practitioner needs a completed branch whose boundary can be tested, not a confidence adjective.

RMP.2:3 - Forces

• Existing evidence can make a new study wasteful, while residual uncertainty alone does not show that evidence is sufficient.
• Unlike designs protect different claims, while a common score can erase the exact criticism each enables.
• Real alternatives expose favorite-method capture, while a fixed option quota can manufacture decorative comparisons.
• Domain, ethics, safety, access, and authority results are external, while their values may determine which design is possible.
• Early design selection gives direction, while a load-bearing unknown can make that direction fictional.
• Operational detail can wait, while “we will solve it later” often hides a selection-changing premise.
• Expected information gain supports proportionate Work, while uncertain gain cannot always be reduced to one probability or utility number.
• Mixed designs can connect unlike evidence relations, while adding methods does not guarantee triangulation or agreement.
• Reporting guidance improves transparency, while a checklist cannot choose or validate a design.
• The receiver needs relevance, while research must not inherit the receiver’s decision authority.

RMP.2:4 - Solution

Hold the ResearchQuestionBrief fixed and test whether current evidence already meets its answer condition. For a question that remains open, compare what obtainable strategies can contribute with the whole burden they require. Separate a selected study, a selection that still needs a missing result, and a completed allocation answer choosing no new study. Return one disposition and preserve all external authority.

RMP.2:4.1 - Admit the Design Question

1. Load the exact brief and frame. Recover the receiver and use, intended episteme change, bounded question, qualified current frame, serious rivals, criticism demand, constraints, source/currentness limits, answer condition and work-stop conditions. Direct entry is allowed when these values are supplied compatibly; ritual passage through RMP.1 is not required.
2. Check stability. If the receiving use, question, current frame, serious rival set, or useful stop has materially changed, return to RMP.1. Do not compare designs for a question that no longer obtains.
3. Keep authority outside. Name domain truth owners, instrument and measurement owners, ethics and safety authorities, access and rights holders, providers, resource owners, and the final receiving decision. A proposed design cannot supply their missing results.
4. Define the design decision boundary. State which family and criticism logic are being selected, which operational details are deliberately not selected here, and what would count as stop, refusal, or reopening.

RMP.2:4.2 - Test the Evidence-Sufficient Stop

Compare the qualified current evidence with the ResearchQuestionBrief’s answer condition. Use the condition concerning what the evidence must establish, not a condition that permits work to end with uncertainty or refusal:

• Does it answer the bounded question for the named receiver and use?
• Does its applicability cover the phenomenon, unit, case, population, corpus, contrast, and horizon?
• Does it address the principal live rival or validity threat rather than merely agree with the favored answer?
• Are its source, evidence-use, provenance, uncertainty, and currentness limits compatible with the reliance proposed?

If the evidence meets the answer condition, return the answer with the source and limits needed for its use. This is EvidenceSufficientStop; the existing answer may already be the complete result. Finish before constructing unused design comparisons or a separate justification for omitting a study. For a later receiving use, retain any uncertainty, scope limit or reason that can change that receiver’s reliance.

If the evidence is insufficient, ask what a new obtainable study could change and whether that contribution warrants its complete burden under the supplied constraints. Count preparation, access, measurement, execution, interpretation, participants, delay and displaced Work, including joint resource limits. Research worth includes a defensible contribution to knowledge and later inquiry; it is not confined to an immediate operating or commercial decision.

When supplied facts already justify selecting no new study for the current allocation question, return QualifiedNoNewStudy under §4.7 with the bounded answer or unresolved claim. Otherwise continue with the inputs and real options that can change the remaining selection. Budget, priority, availability and burden can bear on that allocation answer; they cannot turn insufficient evidence into sufficient evidence.

RMP.2:4.3 - Expose Selection-Changing Inputs

While a selection remains open, identify the external values that can alter the relevant family, criticism or feasibility:

For each unresolved input that can affect the remaining selection, contrast plausible owner results and the design consequences of each. If two plausible results change the family, core contrast, criticism logic, feasibility or stop/refusal, that particular selection remains held. If every admissible result leaves them unchanged, the item may be tested as a PostSelectionNeed. Where supplied facts already settle the current allocation question in favor of no new study, an unknown can instead remain a limitation or reopen condition of QualifiedNoNewStudy. Naming either kind of dependency does not commission obtaining the missing result.

Joint-input test. When several inputs remain unresolved, test their jointly admissible combinations. Include combinations unless supplied owner results exclude them. A set of PostSelectionNeed items is legitimate only while every admitted combination preserves the selected family, core contrast, criticism logic, feasibility, and refusal conditions. Testing one value at a time while fixing the others favorably does not establish this condition.

For example, two necessary tasks require non-overlapping effort from the same ten available investigator-days. Each remaining demand ranges from four to six days, and supplied results do not exclude six plus six. Checking six plus four and four plus six separately passes, but the jointly admissible six-plus-six combination needs twelve days. Do not return ResearchDesignDecision for that strategy. Return ResearchDesignHold with the unresolved demands, their owners, the feasible and infeasible combinations, and the result needed to reopen selection.

RMP.2:4.4 - Compose Serious Design-or-Stop Options

Compare the actual answer-changing options for the same brief. Preserve a feasible incumbent or routine alternative when it is serious, and compare further research with the relevant no-new-study outcome. A source, owner result or criticism relation may rule an apparent option out before detailed design work. Use that reason; there is no minimum number of options to invent or develop.

If only one serious research relation remains, judge whether it can expose the relevant error, is feasible and contributes enough to warrant its whole burden compared with no new study. Its uniqueness neither disqualifies it nor makes selection automatic. Add another option when it offers a genuinely different relation or trade-off that could change this choice.

For each remaining serious option, make the following relations clear, reusing the brief and adequate supplied results:

1. the intended episteme change and useful stop it addresses;
2. the cases, units, materials, population, corpus, intervention/exposure, observations or sources, and comparison relation needed at family level;
3. the principal criticism it can perform and the result that would defeat or narrow the claim;
4. the validity threats it addresses, creates, or leaves live;
5. required domain, source, instrument, access, ethics, safety, rights, authority, resource, and provider results, distinguishing supplied from assumed;
6. expected answer-changing information and the conditions under which the option adds nothing;
7. burden, risk, reversibility, timing, and recoverable refusal or stop; and
8. what remains for later operationalization and trace work if selected.

A serious option differs in an answer-changing relation. Changing software, sample-size notation, interview brand, report format, or level of detail without changing the evidence and criticism relation does not create another option.

RMP.2:4.5 - Preserve Design-Family Differences

These families are a comparison surface, not a lifecycle or evidence hierarchy. A use may enter with an existing claim, source corpus, model, field anomaly, or proposed intervention. It may stop, repeat, switch family after a changed input, or compose unlike components explicitly.

RMP.2:4.6 - Compare on One Decision-Bearing Canvas

Compare the actual options on the following decision-bearing positions. Reuse the existing brief, evidence and owner results; a compact explanation can carry a small comparison.

Do not collapse the comparison into an unqualified score. A bounded decision rule may combine coordinates, but protected constraints, unlike losses, and unknowns remain visible. One feasible option still has to warrant its burden compared with no new study; imaginary rivals add no protection.

RMP.2:4.7 - Return Exactly One ResearchDesignDisposition

Branch A — EvidenceSufficientStop. Use only when current qualified evidence meets the answer condition. Return the exact answer with the evidence, applicability and limitations needed for this use; keep a later receiver’s decision-changing reason or uncertainty visible. The answer itself completes the branch. Select no design and create no unused option comparison or no-study form.

Branch B — ResearchDesignDecision plus PostSelectionNeed. Use only when one feasible family and criticism logic are justified by comparison with actual alternative strategies and with the option of no new study, the expected contribution warrants the whole burden, and no missing value can overturn the selection. Record the selected strategy, candidate comparison, justification, core contrast/criticism, threats, supplied external results, resource and refusal conditions, expected information gain, useful stop, rejected alternatives, and later needs. Before returning Branch B, apply the joint-input test in RMP.2:4.3 to the complete set of remaining needs. For each PostSelectionNeed, show:

1. the bounded value still needed and its owner;
2. the admissible range or alternatives already constrained by supplied results;
3. the invariant selected family and core criticism across every admissible value; and
4. the action if the value arrives outside that range.

An explicitly empty set is written as PostSelectionNeed: none. A need is not post-selection when its unfavorable value would change the family, core contrast, criticism, feasibility, or refusal; return Branch C instead.

Branch C — ResearchDesignHold. Use when a particular selection is still needed and a named missing result prevents deciding it. Make the missing result and owner, exact question and affected candidates, at least two plausible result values and their different design/stop consequences, currently viable alternatives, what Work must not begin, and the reopen condition recoverable. Do not name a “provisional selected design.” The hold identifies the conditional dependency; deciding to obtain that result is separate and requires its own worth, feasibility and authority. The hold can be a useful complete answer about what prevents selection without asserting that an investigation is under way.

Branch D — QualifiedNoNewStudy. Use when the present allocation question is settled by selecting no new study although the evidence does not meet the answer condition. Return the strongest bounded answer or state the exact claim that remains unresolved, together with the reason no worthwhile obtainable study is selected under the current facts and constraints. An unavailable evidence opportunity or the whole burden of the obtainable options exceeding their expected contribution may settle this answer. Keep limitations and the condition that could reopen the choice visible for the receiving use. A material unknown need not become a pending task when no acquisition has been selected. Do not call the evidence sufficient, imply a selected design, waive a receiving authority’s requirements or present obtaining the missing result as commissioned.

The four branches are mutually exclusive for one present selection boundary. Their names distinguish the results; they do not require a separate document or an empty declaration of an unused branch. New evidence or a changed receiving use can reopen the choice. Only Branch B, or a compatible supplied selected-design result, gives RMP.3 a ResearchDesignDecision; a sufficient answer, QualifiedNoNewStudy or a hold does not.

RMP.2:4.8 - What Changes in Practice

The practitioner asks which obtainable strategy can expose the error that matters, what its contribution warrants, and whether a missing result still prevents the current choice. The team can use an already sufficient answer, select useful research, identify a genuine hold, or finish the present allocation with a bounded answer and no new study.

RMP.2:5 - Archetypal Grounding

All cases below are constructed pedagogical cases. Their supplied values distinguish the four dispositions; they do not report actual pump, stream, archive, instrument, or authority results.

RMP.2:5.1 - Accelerated Seal-Test: Different Supplied Values

The supplied ResearchQuestionBrief asks whether a high-temperature acceleration condition preserves the field failure-mechanism relation well enough for degradation evidence to bear on the current Pump-P4 seal-life claim. Research does not choose the maintenance interval.

Compare the following relations when their supplied conditions make them serious:

EvidenceSufficientStop scenario. A newly supplied current result already shows, with compatible materials and operating envelope, that the proposed acceleration condition changes the dominant degradation mechanism. The answer condition is met by the supported rejection of that test condition’s relevance. RMP.2 returns the exact result, limitations, and reopen condition; it does not run an experiment to confirm an answer already sufficient for this use.

ResearchDesignDecision scenario. Domain engineering supplies the mechanism-indicator relation, measurement feasibility, material identity, safe operating envelope, and authority needed for the experimental comparison. The field and model options remain useful secondary evidence but cannot expose acceleration-induced mechanism change as directly within the current constraints. RMP.2 selects the experimental/quantitative family with that core comparison and criticism. PostSelectionNeed contains only the repository locator and serialization of already-required specimen, condition, observation, and deviation fields. The admissible choices change neither family nor criticism; an inability to record any required field falls outside the admitted range and reopens selection.

ResearchDesignHold scenario. The measurement owner has not established whether the proposed indicator distinguishes the two rival degradation mechanisms. One plausible result makes the experimental comparison discriminating; another makes it incapable of answering and favors field observation or a different model relation. RMP.2 returns a hold to the measurement/domain owner for that indicator-feasibility result, names both consequences, and begins no protocol Work. Whether to obtain the indicator-feasibility result remains a separate commitment.

QualifiedNoNewStudy scenario. The available evidence does not establish the relation for the bounded Pump-P4 case. The supplier confirms that the matched specimens no longer exist, and the qualified current frame shows that the obtainable field and model material cannot discriminate the competing mechanisms for that case. The present allocation answer is no new study: the relation remains unresolved. A future specimen collection would concern a different case and cannot recreate the lost comparison. If newly released, qualified field records make a relevant discriminating comparison obtainable within the available resources, reopen that choice and assess the useful study. Neither the earlier no-study answer nor a later selected design decides the maintenance interval.

RMP.2:5.2 - Citizen Stream Salinity: Dispositions without an Affiliation Gate

The resident team supplies a brief asking which rival account explains a salinity increase for a named reach and period: road-salt transport, groundwater contribution, a changed outfall, seasonal hydrology, or sensor drift. Academic status, funding, and publication plans are irrelevant.

• Return EvidenceSufficientStop if current validated monitoring and source results already discriminate the bounded anomaly for the named use. Preserve limits; the team does not need a new project for recognition.
• Return a field/observational ResearchDesignDecision when measure validity, safe site access, comparison reaches/periods, and required authority are supplied and the selected spatial-temporal contrast can challenge the live rivals. An exact trace-file locator can remain a PostSelectionNeed; calibration feasibility, site access, or admissible comparison cannot.
• Return ResearchDesignHold when sensor validity, safe/legal access, outfall-record access, or seasonal comparison availability can still make the field strategy invalid or favor source synthesis, instrument repair, or no study. The hold names the owner and result; it is not a request for an academic sponsor.

The environmental or operational receiver retains response authority. A research result may change the bounded explanation and evidence limits, not order remediation.

RMP.2:5.3 - Historical Source-Critical Case

An archive group asks whether a maintenance-practice change followed Directive-D or emerged earlier. Serious options are: stop on a current authenticated dated record; use a historical/source-critical design comparing provenance, chronology, workshop records, silences, and rival interpretations; or synthesize an already traced contested corpus when the question is corpus-level.

If the archive owner confirms access and provenance for the discriminating records, a historical/source-critical decision may be completed with only non-selection-changing transcription and locator conventions left. If provenance or access to the decisive record family remains unresolved and one result supports a chronology comparison while another eliminates it, that still-needed selection receives ResearchDesignHold. Do not substitute an experimental hierarchy or treat a reporting checklist as the design.

For a narrow chronology question, suppose one authenticated workshop series is the only presently accessible material that could distinguish practice before and after the directive. An online index and another scan format expose the same records and do not supply further design relations. A source-critical examination fits the two available investigator-days, its provenance and access are qualified, and an earlier or later dated entry would change the bounded chronology claim. This one serious research option can warrant ResearchDesignDecision; two invented designs add nothing. If that examination instead needs twenty investigator-days, supplied resource limits leave only two, and no feasible reduction preserves the discriminating relation, retain the unresolved chronology and return QualifiedNoNewStudy for that current allocation. A newly accessible independent ledger could change both the worthwhile comparison and the choice.

RMP.2:5.4 - PostSelectionNeed Counterfactual

Consider two remaining values after a field design appears selected:

The difference is not how late the team plans to resolve the item. It is whether its value can change selection.

RMP.2:6 - Bias-Annotation

RMP.2:7 - Conformance Checklist

Apply the questions to the actual disposition. A sufficient answer or QualifiedNoNewStudy does not fill unused selected-design or PostSelectionNeed positions; a hold states the missing dependency without asserting a commitment to acquire it.

• RMP2-01: A compatible ResearchQuestionBrief and qualified current frame are supplied; a changed brief is returned to RMP.1.
• RMP2-02: The receiver, evidence use, answer condition, work-stop conditions and separate later-decision authority remain visible.
• RMP2-03: EvidenceSufficientStop is tested before new evidence-producing Work is selected.
• RMP2-04: Evidence sufficiency covers the brief’s scope, serious rival, provenance/currentness, uncertainty, and bounded use.
• RMP2-05: Constraint, cost, preference, or low priority is not mislabeled as evidence sufficiency.
• RMP2-06: The actual serious options address the same brief; a sole real research relation is judged against no new study without a quota of invented alternatives.
• RMP2-07: A feasible incumbent or routine alternative is retained when it is serious.
• RMP2-08: Every option states question fit, evidence relation, criticism, validity threats, external results, information gain, burden, refusal, and continuation.
• RMP2-09: Experimental, observational, qualitative, historical, computational, synthesis, and mixed families remain unlike; none is a mandatory successor or universal rank.
• RMP2-10: The selected option can expose the principal error or rival named in the brief.
• RMP2-11: Rejected alternatives and their actual losses are recorded without straw versions.
• RMP2-12: Construct/mechanism, observation/source, instrument/measurement, case/site, ethics/safety/rights, access, resource/provider, and authority inputs are distinguished.
• RMP2-13: Exact supplied owner results are separated from assumptions and missing values.
• RMP2-14: Every unresolved load-bearing value is tested with at least two plausible results and design consequences.
• RMP2-15: A value that prevents a still-needed selection by changing family, core contrast, criticism, feasibility or refusal produces ResearchDesignHold; an unknown does not create a pending investigation when the present allocation is already settled as QualifiedNoNewStudy.
• RMP2-16: ResearchDesignHold names the missing result, owner, affected candidates, plausible consequences, prohibited next Work, and reopen condition without commissioning acquisition.
• RMP2-17: A hold names no provisional selected design.
• RMP2-18: Every PostSelectionNeed has a bounded admissible range and an invariant-family/invariant-criticism argument.
• RMP2-19: A PostSelectionNeed value outside the admitted range reopens selection.
• RMP2-20: An empty PostSelectionNeed set is written explicitly as none.
• RMP2-21: One of EvidenceSufficientStop, ResearchDesignDecision plus genuine PostSelectionNeed, ResearchDesignHold, or QualifiedNoNewStudy answers the present selection boundary. QualifiedNoNewStudy preserves insufficient evidence or a bounded answer and the reason no new study is selected.
• RMP2-22: Only an actual ResearchDesignDecision or supplied equivalent supports entry to RMP.3; it is a prospective strategy, not a protocol, performed Work, authorization, evidence result, or receiving choice.
• RMP2-23: Expected information gain is tied to a live uncertainty and useful stop rather than prestige or data volume.
• RMP2-24: Reporting guidance is not treated as design selection or proof of execution.
• RMP2-25: Domain truth, measurement, instruments, ethics, safety, rights, access, resources, assurance, and authority remain with their owners.
• RMP2-26: The worked cases distinguish the four outcomes under different supplied values and preserve a genuinely worthwhile obtainable study, a true selection-changing hold, and external receiving authority.

RMP.2:8 - Common Anti-Patterns and How to Avoid Them

RMP.2:9 - Consequences

The team receives a decision that is useful before protocol Work begins. Existing evidence can stop waste. Selected designs retain the criticism and refusal logic that justified them. Missing owner results surface before detailed work hardens around a fictional premise. Legitimate operational details can remain without turning every design decision into an indefinite wait.

Pluralism has a cost: candidates cannot be compared by label or one universal evidence score. Practitioners must understand enough of serious alternatives to state their evidence relations and threats honestly. Some preferred designs will be held or rejected when access, measurement, mechanism, safety, or authority changes.

The four dispositions also protect later readers. They distinguish sufficient evidence, a selected strategy, a particular selection still held, and a completed allocation answer with insufficient evidence or a bounded answer. None confuses prospective design or a named missing result with performed or commissioned Work, or transfers downstream authority.

RMP.2:10 - Rationale

Design is justified by criticism, not ceremony. A useful strategy creates a relation between the question and observations or sources that can make a material error visible. Comparing serious alternatives exposes what the preferred strategy cannot learn and prevents a familiar apparatus from defining the question.

The PostSelectionNeed counterfactual protects a selected design. If every admissible value and joint combination preserves the family, criticism and feasibility, later elaboration can proceed without reopening selection. If plausible values fork a selection still needed, calling that design complete would be false; ResearchDesignHold makes the missing dependency explicit. A completed current allocation choosing no new study can retain that same unknown as a limitation and reopen condition.

EvidenceSufficientStop preserves completion by an already adequate answer. QualifiedNoNewStudy separately preserves completion of the current allocation when evidence remains insufficient but no worthwhile obtainable study is selected. Keeping owner results external prevents RMP.2 from manufacturing domain truth, instrument validity, access, safety, ethics, or authority merely to finish a form.

RMP.2:11 - SoTA-Echoing

The working question is: How should a practitioner choose among unlike research designs—or stop—so that the selected strategy bears on the live criticism and no missing load-bearing result is concealed?

The selected current line is design-plural and uncertainty-led. The MRC/NIHR framework for developing and evaluating complex interventions selects among efficacy, effectiveness, theory-based, and systems perspectives from what is already known, which uncertainty matters, and what evidence would be most useful; its phases can be entered, revisited, repeated, or stopped rather than treated as one compulsory sequence. RMP.2 generalizes that selection discipline without importing health-intervention phases into every domain.

Unlike source families constrain criticism differently. The Standards for Reporting Qualitative Research emphasize transparent qualitative reporting while preserving flexibility across paradigms and methods; RMP.2 uses them as a warning that reporting completeness is not design selection. The American Historical Association’s Statement on Standards of Professional Conduct foregrounds careful source use, methods and assumptions, evidence-interpretation relations, bias awareness, and alternative interpretations in historical work. The current Cochrane Handbook makes the review question govern eligibility, search, collection, and synthesis rather than treating “review” as a carrier label. The National Academies’ Reproducibility and Replicability in Science keeps computational reproduction and new-data replication distinct, supporting threat-specific credibility choices rather than one repeatability ladder.

A serious alternative is a universal evidence hierarchy or linear “scientific method”: choose the highest-ranked feasible design, operationalize it, collect data, and report. That route can be efficient for a narrow recurring question, but as a universal selector it suppresses historical source criticism, qualitative reflexivity, observational constraints, model validation, corpus synthesis, and legitimate stops. RMP.2 retains domain hierarchies only when a qualified domain use makes them decision-bearing and compares their actual criticism and losses.

The selected sources do not supply domain truth, universal validity criteria, instrument feasibility, rights, access, safety, ethics, or authority. Reopen this pattern when a stronger design-selection source changes the serious families or criticism relation, when a family is systematically misrouted by the counterfactual test, or when a domain-specific evidence rule changes one candidate. Reopen only the affected comparison and disposition.

RMP.2:12 - Relations

• RMP.1 — Decide Whether a Question Needs Research and When to Stop: supplies the compatible ResearchQuestionBrief and qualified current frame. A changed question, use, frame, or useful stop returns there.
• RMP.1:4.3: shows how F.1, F.0.1 and A.10 contribute to an answer from existing sources and how a comparison can change the research question. RMP.2 uses that answer, its limitations and any unresolved criticism demand to decide whether and how to investigate.
• Current Method Engineering: owns reusable Method identity, repertoire, requirements, architecture, qualification, trial, fit, worth, variants, and introduction. RMP.2 selects a research strategy for one qualified question; it does not qualify a reusable Method.
• Operationalization and trace practice: RMP.3 requires an actual ResearchDesignDecision and its genuine PostSelectionNeed items, or compatible supplied equivalents. EvidenceSufficientStop, QualifiedNoNewStudy and ResearchDesignHold do not supply a selected design. Subsequent trace practice preserves the records of actual Work; the RMP.2 disposition does not assert that Work occurred.
• Domain science and engineering, measurement and instrument owners, archives and data stewards, site and participant owners, ethics, safety, rights, privacy, security, community, resource, provider, assurance, and receiving authorities: supply their own results and retain their own decisions.
• MRC/NIHR complex-intervention framework: supports perspective pluralism, uncertainty-led design, non-linear entry, reconsideration, and stopping for its declared intervention-research scope.
• SRQR, AHA professional standards, Cochrane Handbook, and National Academies reproducibility/replicability account: provide family-specific transparency and criticism distinctions; none is a universal design selector.

RMP.2:End