{"schema_version":1,"assessment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp03_opportunity320_20260801","source_experiment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp03_full320_20260801","cell_id":"invariant_mode_decomposition_design__religious_studies_theology","archetype_slug":"invariant_mode_decomposition_design","domain_slug":"religious_studies_theology","title":"Longitudinal modal reconstruction of coupled religious change","opportunity_summary":"Test whether transformation-based decomposition of longitudinal religious data can identify stable, interpretable configurations that improve held-out reconstruction over separate-variable analysis and variance-only PCA. The candidate provides a bounded retrospective test and strong safeguards, but the problem's prevalence, empirical advantage, stakeholder demand, and distinctness from broader longitudinal latent-state methods remain unestablished.","adopter_authorizer":"A religious-studies research team, subject to institutional ethics approval, data-use agreements, archive or data-steward authorization, and any applicable community-governance process.","scores":{"meaningful_impact":{"score":3,"rationale":"If coupled configurations are present, the workflow could reduce misleading variable-by-variable explanations and preserve subgroup residual evidence. The packet provides no evidence of problem prevalence, realized explanatory improvement, or consequential downstream adoption."},"stakeholder_pull":{"score":2,"rationale":"Researchers and represented communities are identifiable stakeholders, but the sealed candidate contains no expressed demand, adopter commitment, procurement signal, or documented dissatisfaction with current methods."},"incremental_advantage":{"score":3,"rationale":"The proposal makes a testable improvement claim against separate-variable models and PCA through temporal gains, stability checks, and held-out reconstruction. Whether those additions produce meaningful improvement or exceed stronger unmentioned rivals is unknown."},"distinctiveness_plausibility":{"score":2,"rationale":"The transformation-based framing is structurally distinct from the stated baseline and PCA rival, but prior art is explicitly unsearched and overlap with longitudinal latent-state, dynamic-factor, or related computational methods is unresolved."},"technical_implementability":{"score":3,"rationale":"A retrospective train-and-held-out-wave analysis with bootstrap and residual checks is technically bounded, but success depends on consistent coding, sufficient waves and sample size, manageable missingness, and a defensible approximation over a bounded interval."},"adoption_authority_feasibility":{"score":3,"rationale":"The research team can choose an analytic model within a defined approval structure, and it has no authority over religious practice. Feasibility remains contingent on ethics, data-steward, and potentially community approval, none of which is confirmed as secured."},"evidence_readiness":{"score":3,"rationale":"The packet specifies baselines, a rival, held-out evaluation, bootstrap checks, subgroup residuals, and failure conditions. It does not establish access to a suitable dataset or operationalize the decisive gap, fidelity, instability, and harm thresholds."},"safety_net_benefit":{"score":4,"rationale":"The retrospective, deidentified design avoids live intervention and includes suppression, stopping, permission-withdrawal, and aggregate-reporting fallback rules. Residual risk remains from reidentification, essentializing interpretations, and harmful instability labels."},"scalability":{"score":2,"rationale":"The computational workflow may be reusable, but religious meanings, coding systems, governance requirements, historical shocks, and fitted intervals are context-specific; the candidate expressly prohibits extrapolation beyond the registered population and period."}},"score_confidence":"MODERATE","costs":{"first_evidence":{"band_2026_usd":"50K_TO_250K","scope":"One preregistered retrospective pilot using one deidentified, already-authorized longitudinal dataset, including coding and missingness audit, baseline and PCA comparisons, modal estimation, bootstrapping, held-out evaluation, subgroup residual review, governance coordination, and reporting.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["A suitable dataset is already collected and legally accessible.","Only limited recoding or harmonization is required.","The pilot uses existing computing infrastructure.","Domain, statistical, ethics, and community-advisory labor is included.","No new participant recruitment occurs."]},"initial_deployment_startup":{"band_2026_usd":"50K_TO_250K","scope":"Convert a successful pilot into a documented, reproducible workflow for one research program, including threshold finalization, secure data procedures, interpretation protocols, training, and approval updates.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["Deployment remains within one institution or research partnership.","The initial dataset and analytic code can be reused.","No bespoke secure-computing facility is required.","Community-governance requirements remain bounded."]},"operational_launch":{"band_2026_usd":"250K_TO_1M","scope":"Launch the governed workflow across several longitudinal studies or community contexts with dataset-specific harmonization, validation, advisory review, secure analysis, and comparative evaluation.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["Each additional dataset requires substantive coding and interpretive work.","Separate approvals and data-use coordination may be needed.","Launch includes dedicated research, data, and governance personnel.","The workflow is not used for surveillance or live intervention."]},"annual_recurring":{"band_2026_usd":"50K_TO_250K","scope":"Maintain a limited research program through analyst and domain-expert labor, secure data access, software and computing, governance review, robustness reruns, documentation, and controlled dissemination.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["The program handles a small number of studies annually.","No new large-scale primary data collection is included.","Advisory and ethics review recur when datasets or interpretations change.","Computational requirements remain moderate."]}},"research_burden":"HIGH","earliest_credible_horizon":"3_TO_12_MONTHS","pipeline_gates":{"recognizable_externally_supportable_problem":{"status":"UNCERTAIN","reason":"The candidate defines an observable residual signature and a clear problem falsifier, but supplies no empirical evidence that structured residuals or consequential coupled modes actually occur across longitudinal religious studies."},"identifiable_adopter_or_authorizer":{"status":"YES","reason":"The research team is the analytic adopter, while institutional ethics bodies, data stewards, and applicable community-governance bodies are explicitly identified as authorizers."},"distinct_testable_incremental_claim":{"status":"YES","reason":"Held-out reconstruction, modal stability, subgroup residuals, and gap checks can be compared directly with separate-variable analysis and PCA, with failure if the workflow is unstable or offers no meaningful improvement."},"bounded_next_evidence_step":{"status":"YES","reason":"The packet authorizes a preregistered, retrospective, single-dataset pilot using earlier waves for training and one held-out wave for comparison, without participant manipulation or live deployment."},"no_unresolved_safety_or_authority_stop":{"status":"UNCERTAIN","reason":"Strong halt and rollback rules are specified, but permissions, identity-inference risk, subgroup harm budgets, and suppression thresholds are not confirmed or fully operationalized."},"implementation_cost_scope_and_range":{"status":"YES","reason":"The single-dataset pilot and later governed research workflow are sufficiently bounded for broad resource-equivalent bands, although dataset condition, sample scale, and approval burden make the estimates low-confidence."}},"blocking_evidence":["Evidence that separate-variable models leave repeatable structured temporal residuals in at least one suitable, authorized dataset.","Held-out evidence that the modal workflow meaningfully improves reconstruction or explanation over both the baseline and PCA rival.","Bootstrap stability, adequate modal separation, and robustness across credible codings, missingness treatments, and longitudinal strata.","Evidence that consequential subgroup patterns are not hidden and that registered privacy and fidelity budgets can be met.","Operationalized estimands, improvement thresholds, gap rules, instability criteria, and subgroup suppression rules.","Prior-art evidence establishing whether the claimed contribution differs materially from longitudinal latent-state, dynamic-factor, and related computational approaches.","Evidence of researcher or community demand for the workflow and willingness of the required authorizers to support its use."],"next_evidence_step":"Preregister a retrospective pilot on one deidentified dataset whose use is already authorized: fit the separate-variable baseline, PCA rival, and proposed modal workflow on earlier waves; predict one held-out wave; bootstrap modes and gaps; audit subgroup residuals and alternative codings; and reject progression if the workflow lacks registered meaningful improvement over both comparators, is unstable, obscures consequential subgroup patterns, or breaches privacy or fidelity thresholds.","research_questions":["Do separate-variable models leave repeatable structured temporal residuals across credible codings and longitudinal strata?","Does the modal workflow improve registered held-out reconstruction or bounded explanatory usefulness over both separate-variable analysis and PCA?","Are the selected modes, temporal gains, and gaps stable under bootstrap resampling, missingness treatments, survey redesign checks, and demographic-composition controls?","Can domain experts and authorized community reviewers interpret results without treating modes as theological essences, causal proof, pathology, or normative rankings?","Do subgroup residuals remain within registered fidelity and harm budgets without publishing identifiable small-group information?","Are apparent modes robust to singular historical shocks and alternative bounded fitting intervals?","How does the proposal differ from relevant longitudinal latent-state, dynamic-factor, and computational religious-change methods?","Which research teams, data stewards, ethics bodies, or community authorities would authorize and use the workflow if the pilot succeeds?"],"recommendation":"PRIOR_ART_RESEARCH","uncertainty_constraints":["Closed-book assessment provides no evidence about prevalence, market size, stakeholder demand, realized impact, or exact resource requirements.","The existence, stability, interpretability, and usefulness of religious-change modes remain hypotheses.","Dataset availability, longitudinal depth, coding consistency, missingness, sample size, and subgroup identifiability are unspecified.","Religious meanings may be reflexive, contested, nonstationary, nonlinear, and incompatible with a stable linear transformation.","The stated comparators do not cover the broader methodological literature.","Decisive performance, gap, stability, fidelity, privacy, and suppression thresholds are not yet operationalized.","Authority feasibility depends on approvals and governance processes that are identified but not confirmed."],"closed_book_prior_art_boundary":"No prior-art search was performed. The packet supports structural differentiation only from its stated separate-variable baseline and variance-only PCA rival; it does not establish novelty or incremental distinctness relative to longitudinal latent-state, dynamic-factor, state-space, computational historical, or religious-change research."}