Completed PISA example — retrospective Decision Log summary

Record status: This public example reconstructs a consequential specification from the surviving PISA project account. It is not presented as an original time-stamped Decision Log. The date of the first decision, the date this example’s source reasoning was recorded and the precise dates of later checks are not established from the public excerpt. The account should not be used to infer that the form was completed contemporaneously.

A. Initial decision, reconstructed from the project record

Project: PISA moving-benchmark analysis
Decision ID: GOV-UK4-01 (public example identifier)
Date of original decision: Not established from the public excerpt
Original author/recording date: Not established from the public excerpt
Research stage: Analytical specification

Decision: Treat England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as four separate education systems, and exclude the aggregate United Kingdom observation.

Reason presented in the surviving project account: The study concerns distinct trajectories for the four administrations. Including both the four administrations and the aggregate UK observation would double count overlapping national coverage in the comparison field.

Proposal origin as presented by the broader project record: The researcher imposed the four-administration specification. The public excerpt does not show the original time-stamped instruction or rule out earlier independent discussion elsewhere.

Evidence/source status: Published PISA material identifies the four administrations separately. The publicly reproduced example does not contain an archived original entry recording the precise evidence and justification available on the decision date.

B. Later status, reconstructed rather than dated updates

Date/version established publicly?	Later observation from the project account	Evidential limit
No	The specification was retained through subsequent empirical development and robustness work.	This is a retrospective outcome summary, not a dated contemporaneous update.
No	The final described empirical specification uses the four administrations and excludes the aggregate UK observation.	No dated check results or execution logs are reproduced here.

Reported final disposition: Retained. The example does not imply the original researcher could anticipate every downstream consequence.

C. Reconstruction and attribution boundary

Reconstruction date: Not established from the public excerpt; prepared for the public educational resource.
Available public source here: The bounded project account reproduced on this site, not the underlying original decision record.
What can be claimed: The broader project account describes the four-administration specification as researcher-imposed.
What cannot be claimed on this page alone: That the surviving example proves exactly when the decision was first formulated, that the reason was written at that moment, or that every possible contributor and motivation is known.

The blank Decision Log shows how a researcher working now can avoid those evidential gaps by retaining the original entry and appending dated subsequent changes.