# Frame Methodology Pack -- Realist-CMO (`realist_cmo`) -- AS AUDIT CRITERION ONLY

**Source anchor:** Pawson & Tilley, *Realistic Evaluation* (1997); De Weger et al. (2020); Hinrichsen et al. (2025).
**Status:** Public-Evaluator. Loaded by Frame Host E3; readable by E2, E4, E5, E8, E9.

**LOAD-BEARING NOTE:** Use **as audit criterion** only. Any use reducing to transportability signal re-constitutes the RAM S03 ontology inside the Evaluator and triggers near-self-audit. The role-divider (`references/ROLE_DIVIDER_PROTOCOL.md`) enforces this structurally. **Shadish-Cook-Campbell is deliberately excluded** from this pack and reserved for RAM S03.

---

## 1. Methodology

Pawson & Tilley's *Realistic Evaluation* argues that programs do not work by correlation but through **generative mechanisms** firing only under enabling **contexts** to produce patterned **outcomes**. The formalization is the **CMO configuration** (Context + Mechanism -> Outcome), with middle-range theory as its empirical register. De Weger et al. update the configurational machinery; Hinrichsen et al. extend into implementation science.

The realist-CMO audit -- used as criterion, not as transportability signal -- asks: does the claim specify a mechanism rather than report correlation? Does it identify enabling contextual conditions, and distinguish enabling from non-enabling? Does it predict differential outcome patterns across contexts, or generalize one observation into a context-free law?

A claim announcing "intervention X produces outcome Y" without mechanism specification and context articulation fails the audit **even if RAM reports high transportability**. The Evaluator is asking a structurally different question than RAM S03, even when both lineages trace to Pawson-Tilley.

## 2. Claim Types Best-Audited

- Intervention-effect claims.
- Mechanism claims that purport to explain rather than merely describe.
- Generalizability claims that assert portability across contexts.
- Policy claims that infer prescriptive guidance from program evaluation.

## 3. Typical Weaknesses

- Post-hoc application: auditor retrofits a CMO configuration rather than testing mechanism specification.
- Middle-range theory selection is discretionary; two auditors can privilege different theories and produce divergent configurations.
- Underdetermined when context variables proliferate: failed outcomes can be rescued by citing additional unmeasured conditions.
- The frame's strength -- mechanism articulation -- is the exact overlap surface with RAM S03; the role-divider exists because this strength becomes a defect without application-role separation.

## 4. Compatibility Profile (Three Kuhnian Dimensions)

- **Methodological signature:** middle-range / realist. Inquiry proceeds through configurational explication of context-mechanism-outcome triples.
- **Semantic signature:** generative-mechanism. Claims are about causal powers that fire under conditions, not about regularities.
- **Ontological signature:** stratified-realist. Reality has depth -- actual events, empirical observations, and the generative structures that produce them.

Against RAM_S02 and RAM_S08: DISTINCT on all three dimensions. Against **RAM_S03** (which uses Pawson-Tilley as input signal): methodological differs (S03 uses CMO as configuration input; Evaluator uses CMO as audit rubric), but **semantic and ontological axes share Pawson-Tilley lineage**. Summary: **PARTIAL**. The role-divider is the structural response; it is non-overridable.

## 5. Retrieval Hook

- **Corpora:** middle-range theory literature; mechanism-explication studies; CMO-configured evaluations (Pawson-Tilley lineage; De Weger; Hinrichsen). **Excludes** Shadish-Cook-Campbell and their quasi-experimental transportability tradition (reserved for RAM S03).
- **Query style:** pair the claim with its asserted mechanism and the contextual conditions under which the mechanism is claimed to fire; seek contrary-pattern cases and unspecified-context cases.
- **Exclusion rules:** correlational claims presented without mechanism specification; transportability assertions that bypass context articulation; Shadish-Cook-Campbell sources.

## 6. Scoring Hook

- **axis_warrant:** mechanism specification quality. Is the generative mechanism articulated at a level that could be instantiated in a different context, or is it a name without internal structure?
- **axis_fit:** enabling-context identification. Are the contextual conditions that enable the mechanism's firing specified, and are non-enabling conditions distinguished?
- **axis_robustness:** differential-outcome-pattern prediction. Does the claim predict distinct outcomes across context variations, and do the predictions survive out-of-sample cases?
- **aggregation_rule:** `non_collapse` (architectural lock).

## 7. Termination Hook

- **rule_id:** `cmo_completeness`.
- **minimum_artifacts:** 3 CMO reconstructions across non-adjacent enabling-context variants.
- **closure_test:** context, mechanism, and outcome are each independently articulated and linked; the configuration predicts at least one differential pattern that holds up against an out-of-sample case.

## 8. Authors Cited

Pawson, Tilley, De Weger, Hinrichsen. **Shared root with RAM S03 (Pawson-Tilley); role-divider mitigates.** No overlap with RAM S02 (Guyatt, Sterne, Hammersley) or RAM S08 (Glaser, Saunders, Guest, Callaghan). Shadish, Cook, Campbell are **not** cited here; reserved for RAM S03.
