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hypothesis-formation-variable-identification

Business
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SOP: identify variables and their roles within a hypothesis

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How to use this skill

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Source SKILL.md: https://github.com/yogsoth-ai/de-anthropocentric-research-engine/blob/HEAD/skills/hypothesis-formation-variable-identification/SKILL.md

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Variable Identification

Identify all variables from a mechanism description and annotate their roles within the hypothesis structure.

HARD-GATE

Not met → stop, return error: mechanism description is insufficient to identify variables.

Pipeline

  1. Precondition check: verify mechanism chain completeness
  2. Variable extraction: enumerate all variables from every mechanism chain (including implicit variables)
  3. Role classification: assign a role to each variable (IV/DV/mediator/moderator/control/confound)
  4. Deduplication and merging: when the same variable appears in different mechanisms, merge it and annotate multiple roles
  5. Operationalizability assessment: evaluate whether each variable can be measured (high/medium/low/unclear)
  6. Output a structured variable list

Output Format

[
  {
    "name": "Variable name",
    "role": "IV | DV | mediator | moderator | control | confound",
    "description": "What this variable represents",
    "source_mechanism": ["mechanism name(s) where this variable appears"],
    "operationalizable": "high | medium | low | unclear",
    "operationalization_notes": "How it might be measured or manipulated"
  }
]

Identify at least 2 variables (1 IV + 1 DV).