RMP.3:4 - Solution
Keep the selected question and criticism visible while deciding what will be done. Resolve the consequential choices, check their combined effect, and return only the decision or external result that is actually missing or defeated.
RMP.3:4.1 - Recover the question and the selected design
Start with a compatible ResearchQuestionBrief from RMP.1 or a supplied equivalent. Recover what is being asked, for which use, within which population, setting, period or corpus, and what would count as a useful answer or stop. The intended episteme change is the change in an explanation, model or other knowledge claim that the inquiry seeks.
Recover the ResearchDesignDecision from RMP.2 or a supplied equivalent: the selected evidence relation, live alternatives, core contrast, threats and method-appropriate criticism. Here criticism means an examination capable of exposing an important error or limiting the proposed answer. It need not be a significance test or an experiment.
A ResearchDesignHold with a prestigious Method name is still a hold. Obtain the missing selection-changing result before treating the design as selected. Conversely, compatible supplied inputs allow direct entry; there is no requirement to recreate RMP-branded briefs or repeat earlier decisions.
Choose one operation that matters. Finish the sentence:
We will obtain or examine this material in this way because it can distinguish this live alternative, within these limits.
For the seal inquiry, this may connect a mechanism-sensitive observation to the possibility that acceleration changes the degradation process. For a historian, it may connect an authenticated date to the rival possibility that a practice changed before the directive being investigated. If that connection cannot be stated, recover its source or return the unresolved design premise.
RMP.3:4.2 - Connect the question to particular material and actions
Specify the choices on which that connection depends. The following questions organize one operational specification; they are not a compulsory form to reproduce for every inquiry.
| Choice to settle | What makes the specification usable |
|---|---|
| Phenomenon, construct or meaning | State what the inquiry is trying to distinguish and why the proposed observation, source or encounter bears on it. A familiar variable name or cited scale does not establish that relation in the present use. |
| Units, cases and selection | Identify what is selected, exposed or changed, what is observed, and what the eventual answer is about. State inclusion and selection reasons and the source of the attainable sample or corpus. Repeated readings of one specimen are not additional independent specimens. |
| Comparison or interpretive relation | Explain what will be compared, challenged or interpreted, which rival it can expose, and what differences must be controlled, described or acknowledged. |
| Timing and context | Specify the periods, sequence, exposure or engagement conditions that make the material comparable or interpretable. Retain the conditions that could make a later observation a different case. |
| Measurement, source or engagement Method | Identify the qualified measurement procedure, source-critical technique, interview or field approach, computation or other supplied Method. Include the material version and conditions that affect its use. |
| Information and uncertainty | State why the attainable material is useful for the intended criticism, what its limits are, and which supplied domain or statistical judgement supports that expectation. |
| Execution and access | Say who or what supplies the necessary capability, material, facility, permission and access before the affected action. A proposed arrangement does not establish their availability. |
For quantitative inquiry, obtain the applicable sample-size or precision rationale, dependence model and measurement qualifications. RMP.3 connects those results to the research question; it does not supply a universal sample count, effect size, psychometric cutoff or causal-identification formula. An instrument indication becomes a measurement result only through its appropriate measurement account, including uncertainty and applicable qualification. FPF C.16 provides the common measurement and characterization discipline.
For a historical inquiry, operational detail may concern source series, authenticity, dates, provenance uncertainty, transcription and the possibility of archival silence. For qualitative inquiry, it may concern theoretical orientation, researcher and participant positions, encounter conditions and the permitted development of interpretation. Asking what a source or encounter can support is more useful than forcing either inquiry into a trial-outcome table.
Use qualified domain procedures where they already answer these questions. Record the research connection and any changed application condition, not a weaker replacement manual.
RMP.3:4.3 - State the intended use of the material and the records it needs
Explain how the planned observations or sources will enter the intended analysis or interpretation. Identify the supplied Method and the consequential choices still to be made under it. Specify exclusions, missingness treatment, stopping or adaptation rules where they matter. These are intentions; they do not constitute a performed analysis or a warranted result.
Decide what a later critic would need to examine those choices. A specimen identifier may connect an exposure record to a measured value. A search version may explain why a source entered a review. A dated protocol may distinguish an advance commitment from a choice made after an outcome was seen.
Arrange capture before the relevant distinction can be lost. RMP.4 supplies the actual trace and its limitations. Capture can begin while the operational specification is still developing; PatternID order is not a research calendar. Identify unresolved choices as unresolved rather than supplying an invented final claim to make the records look complete.
Plan permitted retention and access with their actual owners. A public summary, a controlled original and a later independent inspection can support different examinations. If the desired criticism needs information that cannot be retained or examined, settle that consequence in the design instead of assuming that a disclosure statement will make the criticism possible.
RMP.3:4.4 - Preserve useful commitments and method-appropriate flexibility
Record what was decided, why, and its timing relative to relevant data access, outcome exposure or interpretive engagement. Distinguish a study registration, a protocol and an analysis plan by their actual content. The label “preregistered” alone does not tell a critic which choice preceded which information.
Commit in advance where the chosen Method and receiving use rely on that commitment. Permit bounded evolution where it belongs to the inquiry, and explain how a change remains connected to the same question. If an external institution requires a particular registration or approval, obtain that result through its own rules; RMP does not grant it.
For example, a reflexive inquiry into how former workers experienced a factory closure can refine a prompt after an encounter exposes a previously unnoticed meaning. Preserve the starting prompt, the reason for refinement and the affected encounters. Changing the task to estimating the fraction of all former workers who agree with a proposition requires a different question and design; calling it another interview amendment does not preserve the original inquiry.
Other design families require their own operational distinctions:
| Inquiry | Consequential detail and return |
|---|---|
| Historical or source-critical | State which inspected documents can establish chronology and how contrary or inaccessible sources affect it. An unavailable earlier series cannot be treated as inspected silence. Return a defeated chronology comparison to RMP.2. |
| Computational or model-based | Specify the model–target relation, input and parameter choices, transformations, environment needs and intended sensitivity or analysis Method. A successful program run cannot supply a missing model–phenomenon justification. |
| Evidence synthesis | Make the supplied review question actionable through eligibility, search arrangements, screening, extraction and appraisal intentions. A convenient source restriction that can change the answer reopens the affected design; reporting the restriction is not sufficient justification. Actual synthesis remains separately performed. |
| Mixed inquiry | Explain what each component contributes, what they share, and how their results will be related. Check shared access, participants, resources and assumptions. Losing an archival chronology component cannot be repaired merely by adding interviews that depend on the same retrospective account. |
These are examples of method-sensitive choices, not a closed taxonomy or a checklist applied in full to each study.
RMP.3:4.5 - Test the whole arrangement and choose the exact return
Read the completed arrangement as a possible piece of work. Could it still expose the error or rival that justified the selected design? Check interactions among selection, access, measurement, timing, resources and records, including their jointly admissible unresolved values.
RMP.2:4.3 supplies the joint-input condition: every admitted combination of PostSelectionNeed values preserves the selected family, core contrast, criticism, feasibility and refusal conditions. A PostSelectionNeed is therefore a bounded remaining need, not anything the team happens to postpone. Apply that condition to the actual combined specification. Do not test each uncertainty while holding the others artificially favourable.
| What the specification reveals | Action and result |
|---|---|
| The choices and their joint effects stay within the selected question/design bounds. | Complete or amend the protocol and its reasons. State the supported scope, remaining bounded needs and change conditions, then proceed only with the supported work. |
| A particular external result is still missing, but every admissible value preserves the selected design. | Name the needed result, its owner, the action it blocks and the condition for resuming that action. Retain the design and the usable portions of the specification; do not call the blocked part executable. |
| A new value can defeat the selected family, contrast, criticism, feasibility or refusal condition. | Return that value and its consequences to RMP.2. Preserve the previous decision and any actual work in the trace. The protocol is not a place to silently select another design. |
| The question, intended knowledge change, population/context claim or useful stop changes. | Return the changed question to RMP.1 and carry its answer into the dependent design and specification. |
| Permission, resources or another practical decision are withheld independently of evidence sufficiency. | Return to that responsible owner. Preserve the research question and identify the prohibited action. Inability to proceed is not an evidence-sufficient stop. |
The distinction can be small but decisive. Waiting for the exact calibration result can block a measurement while the design remains justified if all admitted results preserve the required discrimination. Discovering that the instrument may not distinguish the competing mechanisms reopens design selection. A numerical value is not “mere detail” simply because it arrives late.
RMP.3:4.6 - Leave a usable operational result
The ResearchProtocolAndOperationalizationMap is usable for its stated scope when another suitably competent practitioner can recover:
- the brief and selected design being elaborated;
- the consequential operational choices and their question-relative reasons;
- the supplied Methods, qualifications and practical conditions on which those choices depend;
- the planned conduct, use of material and required records; and
- the remaining limitations and conditions for an amendment, return or stop.
These are meanings to preserve, not five new forms. A small inquiry may put them beside the relevant procedure in an existing protocol. Link larger source and instrument accounts by their actual versions and uses.
An unfinished specification can still be a useful partial result. Name its unsupported action or inference precisely. The next useful move is then obtaining the missing result or revisiting the defeated choice, not extending a protocol whose core comparison no longer works.