RMP.Preface:4 - Question, frame, design, Work, result, and decision remain distinct

A receiving question names why knowledge may matter. A ResearchQuestionBrief states the intended episteme change, current frame, bounded question, criticism demand and constraints. It distinguishes what the evidence must establish for an adequate answer from when the present work may finish with uncertainty, refusal or a missing-input return. A research design is a prospective strategy connecting that question to observations or sources and method-appropriate criticism. A protocol or operationalization map elaborates a design. Performed Work, records, analysis output, criticism, a warranted episteme change, publication, recognition, and actual downstream use are further distinct.

RMP.1/RMP.2 supply the brief and current design disposition; RMP.3 supplies operational specification or an exact return; RMP.4 supplies the trace and its receiving limits; RMP.5 supplies the bounded claim and actual criticism; RMP.6 supplies the credibility choice and interprets an actual test return when one exists. RMP.7 supplies EvidenceSynthesis; RMP.8 supplies EpistemeChangeAndEvidenceReturn; RMP.9 supplies ResearchMethodPracticeRevision, including supported retention or a bounded correction. These names require the relevant content, not a new file for each result. A protocol remains an intention, and a trace represents only conduct supported by its records. Later conduct needs actual performance and its evidence. Domain claims need their qualified support, and the receiving practice retains study permission and its engineering, management, policy, regulatory or personal decision.

A Method pattern is a knowledge account of a Method and its use: the recurring problem and its frame, forces, solution, grounds, cases, limits, consequences and relations belong to its content, including FPF’s SoTA comparison. The section template, natural language, notation, file organization and publication location concern how that content is presented. A pattern language additionally organizes substantive relations among its contributions; a DPF is not merely a document format. One article can develop several related contributions, and one contribution can be explained in an article and in a pattern account without erasing the distinctions between their uses. RMP.8:4.4.1 explains how to preserve the content and means needed to repeat or adapt it.