Lesson 1.2.3: How Protocols Minimize Bias – Selection, Reporting, and Outcome Switching
The Protocol Integrity Audit
Five scenarios. Five promises. Each scenario tests whether a protocol decision honours, strains, or breaks one of the five promises a methodologist makes before they see the data.
Read each scenario. Judge whether it is acceptable, concerning, or a direct violation.
You will see five protocol-stage decisions, one at a time. Each scenario is built around a specific promise from the five-promise framework. For each, you decide whether the methodologist\’s action is acceptable (standard practice with the protocol intact), concerning (defensible but with a documentation gap), or a direct violation (breaking one of the five promises).
After your judgment, you will receive feedback explaining the reasoning and the source citation. There is no time limit. When you finish all five scenarios, you will be invited to two reflection prompts that connect the audit to your own protocol.
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Audit complete. Five promises tested.
You have judged five protocol decisions against the five promises Station 1.2 asks you to make. Now we turn the audit lens to your own protocol.
Your protocol audit commitment
These prompts are for your research journal. Nothing is submitted, graded, or stored. They exist to bind what you just practiced into what you will build at Station 1.3.
Of the five promises, which one is most at risk in your own research context. It is the promise you would be most tempted to bend if a co-author, supervisor, or funder pressured you? Name the promise. Name the specific situation. Then write the one sentence you would say to hold the line.
Before you finalise your protocol at Station 1.3, list three specific clauses you will write into the protocol document, one each for the three promises you find hardest to honour in your discipline. Make them concrete. Vague clauses fail under pressure.
You have completed this audit. Use the navigation below to continue to the next lesson in Station 1.2 of your Meta-Journey.