Research Standards
How PPRI intends to make its research traceable, reproducible and clear about what is known, calculated, assumed and still uncertain.
1. Source hierarchy
Primary official sources receive priority for legal, demographic, fiscal and administrative facts. These include constitutional and statutory texts, Pakistan Bureau of Statistics releases, Finance Division material, Election Commission publications and official notifications. Academic research and reputable secondary sources may provide context or comparative analysis.
2. Reference dates
Every important dataset should carry a reference year or publication date. A 2023 Census figure is not silently presented as a 2026 population estimate. When newer official information becomes available, older figures remain identified as historical observations.
3. Fact, calculation and interpretation
- Documented fact: directly supported by a cited source.
- Derived figure: calculated by PPRI from cited inputs.
- Interpretation: an analytical reading of evidence.
- Scenario: a hypothetical configuration used for analysis.
- Policy option: an institutional choice that can be evaluated but is not assumed to be adopted.
4. Territorial scenarios
Analytical maps are labelled as scenarios. They are not official boundary proposals unless a competent public authority has formally proposed them. Scenario pages should state the districts or areas included, the source of the underlying administrative geography and any assumptions used.
5. Public consultation
Online forms and open submissions can document public arguments and generate research questions. Unless sampling is designed to support population inference, PPRI will not describe voluntary responses as nationally representative public opinion.
6. Corrections
Material factual errors should be corrected with a visible note describing what changed. Superseded datasets should not be silently overwritten when preserving the research record is important.
7. Legal and policy limits
PPRI publications are research products, not legal advice. Constitutional analysis should identify the relevant provisions and procedural questions and should not present a contested legal interpretation as settled law without qualification.