Example · Researcher
Which uncertainty should our next study be designed to resolve?
A researcher narrows a validation question before expanding a proposed claim
The situation
Planning the next validation study
Your team is developing a BCI for selecting messages and preparing its next study proposal. Colleagues want to describe future home communication, while the internal prototype report concerns a guided task. You need to decide which question the next protocol should address and what its results could establish
What this example starts with
- The supplied material
- Assume the project record describes a prototype, a guided message-selection task and an internal report whose design and limitations still need review
- The open question
- The record does not establish whether the intended users can use the proposed system across sessions or how assistance affects the activity
- The constraint
- Your proposed study cannot answer every question about independent home use, and its contribution needs to remain understandable to reviewers
Working through the question
Separate the present and future claims
You describe the prototype task and the longer-term application separately in the assessment. This exposes the assumptions between them: intended users, repeated use, assistance and setting. The future application provides motivation, while the next study needs a narrower question it can actually examine
Choose the consequential uncertainty
Your team chooses to investigate use across sessions before proposing a home-setting study. You record why that uncertainty matters and which questions will remain unanswered. Compass organizes the reasoning; the research team still needs to develop and justify the study design
Make the proposed evidence inspectable
You ask whether the draft protocol distinguishes system performance from assistance and reports interruptions as well as completed tasks. These are questions for protocol development and review. Planned measurements remain proposed evidence until the study is conducted and its results can be examined
An illustrative take-away
A focused evidence plan
You draft a study rationale connecting the question, proposed measurements and remaining limits for scientific review
- Which across-session question would this protocol answer?
- How would assistance, interruptions and changes in setup be documented?
- Which home-use claims would still be outside the resulting evidence?
Written for this example to show what the reader could take into their next conversation
A project assessment does not validate a protocol or replace scientific and participant-protection review
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