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.