{"schema_version":1,"assessment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp03_opportunity320_20260801","source_experiment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp03_full320_20260801","cell_id":"deadweight_loss_reduction__ethnography_qualitative_methods","archetype_slug":"deadweight_loss_reduction","domain_slug":"ethnography_qualitative_methods","title":"Risk-tiered review path for low-risk qualitative research","opportunity_summary":"Evaluate whether independently classified low-risk ethnographic and qualitative protocols can use a qualitative-risk-specific review path that reduces consequential delay and method degradation while preserving consent, privacy, participant-agency, equity, and community-harm protections. The prevalence of disproportionate review and the path's protective equivalence remain unestablished hypotheses.","adopter_authorizer":"The institution's duly authorized research-ethics body, subject to any governing requirements and with participant or community advisory input appropriate to the study class.","scores":{"meaningful_impact":{"score":3,"rationale":"Avoiding missed field windows, weakened methods, and abandoned ethically permissible studies could materially improve knowledge production, but the packet supplies no prevalence, effect-size, or realized-consequence evidence."},"stakeholder_pull":{"score":2,"rationale":"Researchers and institutions have plausible reasons to value a better-fitted review path, but the candidate provides no demonstrated demand, complaints, adoption requests, or participant and community support."},"incremental_advantage":{"score":3,"rationale":"The proposal targets eligibility and risk classification rather than merely shortening forms or administration, creating a testable advantage over the named rival; whether misrouting rather than protocol quality or reviewer scarcity is the binding cause is unknown."},"distinctiveness_plausibility":{"score":2,"rationale":"A qualitative-specific, risk-tiered path is coherently differentiated within the packet, but prior art is explicitly unsearched, so external distinctiveness cannot be credited."},"technical_implementability":{"score":3,"rationale":"The path uses recognizable institutional processes such as screening, routing, adjudication, monitoring, and rollback, but the risk taxonomy, blinded classifier, protection-equivalence criteria, and harm thresholds are not operationally defined or validated."},"adoption_authority_feasibility":{"score":3,"rationale":"A duly authorized institutional ethics body is identified as the decision-maker and the pilot is bounded, but the packet acknowledges that institutional authority may not extend to changing mandated review requirements."},"evidence_readiness":{"score":3,"rationale":"The candidate specifies observable processing, design, complaint, incident, and distributional outcomes plus problem and intervention falsifiers; readiness is limited by absent baseline data, matching rules, classifier validation, and protection-equivalence thresholds."},"safety_net_benefit":{"score":4,"rationale":"Higher-risk and coercive studies are excluded, substantive safeguards remain required, and serious harm, systematic misclassification, or excess complaints trigger suspension and reversion to ordinary review. Rare, delayed, and collective harms may nevertheless evade a short evaluation."},"scalability":{"score":2,"rationale":"The workflow could potentially be reproduced, but risk calibration, community-harm assessment, governing requirements, institutional authority, reviewer practice, and data systems may vary substantially across institutions."}},"score_confidence":"MODERATE","costs":{"first_evidence":{"band_2026_usd":"50K_TO_250K","scope":"A bounded retrospective baseline study at a small number of cooperating institutions: independently classify a sample of completed qualitative protocols, compare matched review paths, and measure requirement mismatch, delay, field-window loss, method changes, withdrawals, complaints, and recorded harms without changing live review decisions.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["Institutions can lawfully provide de-identified protocol and workflow records.","The sample is limited to a small number of sites and completed cases.","Labor includes independent screening, data extraction, matching, analysis, governance review, and participant or community advisory input.","No new review path is deployed during this step."]},"initial_deployment_startup":{"band_2026_usd":"50K_TO_250K","scope":"Prepare a single-institution controlled pilot by defining the qualitative risk taxonomy, eligibility and adjudication procedures, safeguard-equivalence criteria, complaint and harm boundaries, workflow changes, reviewer training, data capture, compliance review, and rollback procedures.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["Existing review software requires configuration rather than replacement.","The institution has authority to authorize the bounded pilot.","No physical equipment or major new information system is required.","External legal, community, privacy, or ethics expertise is included where needed."]},"operational_launch":{"band_2026_usd":"50K_TO_250K","scope":"Run one small prospective randomized or stepped-wedge review-cycle pilot with independent screening, ordinary-path comparison, case adjudication, monitoring, evaluation, and capacity to return unresolved cases to ordinary review.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["Only independently screened low-risk qualitative protocols are eligible.","The pilot is confined to one institution or a similarly bounded partnership.","Existing ethics staff perform much of the review, with incremental evaluator and monitoring labor included.","The band excludes broader rollout and long-term detection of rare harms."]},"annual_recurring":{"band_2026_usd":"50K_TO_250K","scope":"Maintain a limited institutional path through eligibility screening, reviewer time, training, adjudication, participant or community input, complaint and incident monitoring, audits, data management, and periodic evaluation.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["Volume remains moderate and no dedicated large review unit is created.","The taxonomy and workflow require periodic recalibration.","Existing institutional compliance and software infrastructure remain usable.","Multi-institution expansion or major system procurement would increase the band."]}},"research_burden":"HIGH","earliest_credible_horizon":"12_TO_36_MONTHS","pipeline_gates":{"recognizable_externally_supportable_problem":{"status":"YES","reason":"The proposed mismatch is recognizable and externally testable through review requirements, duration, missed field windows, method changes, withdrawals, complaints, privacy incidents, and community harms, although its prevalence is not established."},"identifiable_adopter_or_authorizer":{"status":"YES","reason":"The candidate explicitly assigns authority to the institution's duly authorized research-ethics body, with study-appropriate participant or community advisory input."},"distinct_testable_incremental_claim":{"status":"YES","reason":"The proposal claims that changing low-risk eligibility and routing will outperform ordinary review and generic administrative streamlining when coarse classification is the binding cause; matched comparisons and stated intervention falsifiers can test that claim."},"bounded_next_evidence_step":{"status":"YES","reason":"A retrospective matched baseline study of completed cases can safely compare independently classified low-risk protocols across review experiences and falsify the problem diagnosis before any live-path assignment."},"no_unresolved_safety_or_authority_stop":{"status":"UNCERTAIN","reason":"The packet supplies exclusions, monitoring, suspension, and rollback, but the classifier and protection-equivalence standard are unvalidated, delayed collective harms may be missed, and authority to alter mandated requirements is unresolved."},"implementation_cost_scope_and_range":{"status":"YES","reason":"A bounded single-institution evidence and pilot sequence can be scoped across classifier design, governance, workflow configuration, training, monitoring, and evaluation, although the broad ranges have low confidence without site-specific staffing and compliance information."}},"blocking_evidence":["Baseline evidence that independently classified low-risk qualitative protocols face disproportionate requirements or consequential delay after accounting for study complexity and submission completeness.","An operational qualitative-risk taxonomy with blinded eligibility assessment, adjudication rules, and evidence of acceptable classification reliability.","Defined protection-equivalence criteria and preset bounds for complaints, privacy failures, participant burden, inequitable exposure, and community harm.","Evidence distinguishing classification-related delay from incomplete submissions, necessary substantive scrutiny, reviewer scarcity, and downstream work shifting.","Confirmation that the prospective authorizing body can lawfully alter routing for the eligible protocol class.","Prior-art evidence establishing whether the proposed path or its material components are already used or evaluated elsewhere."],"next_evidence_step":"With cooperating ethics bodies, conduct a time-bounded retrospective matched review of completed protocols: independently and blindly classify a prespecified sample for qualitative risk, compare ordinary-path requirements and outcomes against matched low-risk cases receiving the closest available alternative handling, and reject the problem hypothesis if classification does not predict disproportionate requirements, consequential delay, missed field windows, method degradation, or withdrawal after accounting for complexity and submission completeness.","research_questions":["How prevalent are disproportionate requirements and consequential delays among independently classified low-risk qualitative protocols?","Can low-risk eligibility be defined and classified reliably without encouraging strategic understatement of risk?","Are delays principally caused by coarse routing, incomplete protocols, necessary scrutiny, reviewer scarcity, or researcher coordination costs?","What safeguards and thresholds establish credible equivalence for consent, privacy, participant agency, equity, and individual and collective harm?","Does the proposed path reduce consequential delay and preserve completion or methodological fit relative to ordinary review and generic administrative streamlining?","Does the path increase misclassification, complaints, privacy failures, participant burden, inequitable exposure, or delayed community harm?","Can the relevant ethics body authorize the path under applicable institutional and governing requirements?","Do aggregate benefits conceal concentrated burdens on marginalized participants or communities?","What materially similar review paths or evaluations already exist?","Does reviewer work disappear, or merely shift downstream to investigators, administrators, or communities?"],"recommendation":"PARTNERED_RESEARCH","uncertainty_constraints":["Problem prevalence and consequence magnitude are hypotheses rather than established findings.","No market-size, stakeholder-demand, realized-impact, or effect-size evidence is supplied.","Prior art is unsearched, so novelty and external distinctiveness are unmeasured.","The low-risk classifier, adjudication procedure, and protection-equivalence thresholds are unspecified and unvalidated.","Rare, delayed, collective, and distributionally concentrated harms may not be observable in a short or small study.","Institution-specific legal authority, staffing, data access, workflow constraints, and costs are unknown.","All cost bands are broad resource-equivalent planning judgments, not observed or exact costs."],"closed_book_prior_art_boundary":"No conclusion is drawn about novelty, prevalence, existing risk-tiered ethics pathways, market size, realized impact, or external performance. Distinctiveness is assessed only as internal differentiation from the packet's named administrative-streamlining rival; external prior-art research remains required."}