RMP.2:0.1 - Working Terms
| Name in this pattern | What it denotes |
|---|---|
| research design | A justified strategy connecting the qualified question to cases, units, materials, observations or sources, analysis intentions, method-appropriate criticism, validity threats, and a useful stop. A label, protocol template, report checklist, apparatus, or software package is not the design. |
| design family | A broad relation among question, evidence source, intervention or exposure, comparison, and criticism, such as experimental/quantitative, field/observational, qualitative/reflexive, historical/source-critical, computational/model, synthesis, or an explicit mixed composition. Family names do not erase domain variants. |
| criticism logic | The design’s account of which material error, rival explanation, source failure, dependence, bias, or unsupported transfer can be exposed, by which contrast or challenge, and what result would defeat or narrow the claim. |
| serious design-or-stop option | An actual stop or feasible or conditionally feasible strategy for the same ResearchQuestionBrief that differs in an answer-changing evidence relation, criticism, validity trade-off, resource use, or refusal condition. A renamed method or more detailed version of the same relation is not another option. |
| EvidenceSufficientStop | A disposition stating that qualified current evidence already meets the brief’s answer condition for the named use, with residual uncertainty and reopen conditions visible. It authorizes no downstream decision. |
| ResearchDesignDecision | A disposition selecting a worthwhile feasible design family and criticism logic against the actual alternatives, including no new study, with justification, threats, constraints, external results, refusal conditions, and useful stop. It asserts no performed Work or obtaining result. |
| PostSelectionNeed | A finite, explicit item still needed to instantiate, record, schedule, or support the selected design whose every admissible resolution leaves the selected family and core criticism logic unchanged. The set may be explicitly none. |
| ResearchDesignHold | A disposition withholding a particular selection still needed because one named missing or unresolved external result can change the family, core contrast, observation/source admissibility, criticism logic, feasibility, or refusal. It does not commission obtaining that result. |
| QualifiedNoNewStudy | A completed current research-allocation answer selecting no new study, with the insufficient evidence or bounded answer retained and the reason no worthwhile obtainable study is selected. A material unknown may remain a limitation or reopen condition; it is not automatically an awaited result. |
| selection-changing uncertainty | An unresolved value for which two plausible owner results lead to different serious strategies, criticism logics, or a stop/refusal. It cannot be hidden as operational detail. |
| expected information gain | The answer-changing reduction in uncertainty or discrimination among live claims expected from an option, relative to its cost, risk, constraints, and useful stop. It need not be a single number. |
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.