The question moved too.
We started asking whether a paper was a randomized trial. We ended asking something narrower.
what we set out to ask
Does this paper report the primary results of a randomized trial?
The scope of “randomized trial” kept leaking.
what we actually ended up asking
Does this paper analyze patient-level health outcomes from an individually randomized intervention?
Refining the codebook meant looking upstream at what the screening decision was feeding into — and the answer pulled the question with it.
The codebook we ended with answers a sharper question than the one we set out to ask.
@karlrohe