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Founding Phase · Private Beta. The Institute is in private beta. Any example content is labelled as such and is never presented as real.

DSI
Checklist

Evidence and Source Quality Checklist

This tool has been retired

It stays online so existing links, version history and any work you already started against it still resolve. It is no longer maintained or reviewed.

Use Claim & Evidence Map instead
Type
Checklist
Difficulty
Intermediate
Time
20 min
Version
v1.0.0
Updated
7/30/2026
dataproposal analysistechnical

What this helps you do

Governance debates rarely fail on logic. They fail on unexamined inputs.

The protocol grades sources, never conclusions.

When to use this

  • A proposal cites figures, studies, or third-party claims you cannot immediately verify.
  • You are deciding how much weight to give conflicting sources.
  • You are preparing a public rationale that will rest on evidence.

When NOT to use this

  • To judge whether a claim is true. It grades the source, not the conclusion.
  • On claims where no source has been offered at all; ask for one first.

What you'll need

  • The specific claim, quoted
  • Any source the proposer has supplied
  • The date the data was produced
  • The parameters in force at the time

Estimated completion time

20 minutes

Working time for one governance action, assuming the inputs listed here are already to hand.

How to use it

  1. 1Isolate one claim at a time and write it down verbatim.
  2. 2Grade the supporting source against each dimension and note the weakness, not just a score.
  3. 3Record whether you could reach the primary source in two clicks.
  4. 4Where the source fails on independence or reproducibility, ask publicly for a stronger one.
  5. 5Carry the grading into your rationale so readers can weigh it themselves.

The tool

Full checklist - v1.0.0

Grading dimensions

  • Provenance: can you reach the primary source in two clicks?
  • Independence: does the source benefit from the claim?
  • Recency: is the data still valid for the current parameters?
  • Reproducibility: could a third party recompute the figure?
  • Completeness: what was excluded, and was the exclusion stated?
Fictional Example

Invented for illustration. It does not describe a real governance action, proposal, or organisation.

Fictional grading

  • Claim: adoption grew 300% after the pilot.
  • Provenance: figure appears only in the proposer's own slide deck. Weak.
  • Independence: the proposer benefits directly from the claim. Weak.
  • Reproducibility: no method or dataset published. Fails.
  • Handling: request the underlying dataset before treating the figure as evidence.

How to interpret the result

  • Each rated claim tells you how much weight the underlying evidence can bear.
  • A weak rating means the claim is unproven here, not that it is false.

Limitations

  • It assesses evidence quality, not the merit of the proposal.
  • It cannot detect fabricated data that is internally consistent.

Sources and methodology

Learn this method

This tool records the work. The Training Lab teaches how to do it.

  • proposal-due-diligence · Proposal Due Diligence: From Claim to Evidence

    Proposal Due Diligence: From Claim to Evidence

    Teaches how to verify a source without over-claiming what it proves.

    Open lesson

Downloads

  • Markdown export: the complete tool, including metadata, instructions, the template, limitations, sources and version history.

No other file formats are published for this resource. We list a format only when the file exists.

Version and governance

Current version
v1.0.0
Published
8/9/2026
Last updated
7/30/2026
Next scheduled review
1/30/2027
Licence
CC BY 4.0
Editorial status
Not yet externally reviewed

No named reviewer is shown because no external review has been completed. Attribution appears only once a verified reviewer has signed off.

Changelog

  • v1.0.0 (2026-07-30) - Migrated from the static library into the resource register.
  • v1.0.0 (2026-08-10) - Retired. Superseded by Claim-Evidence Map & Citation Log. Kept for version history and existing member workspaces.
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