research / principia / reports
Construct-family roadmap
17 construct families across 4 tiers (foundational · derivative · composite · outcomes), 8 queued for sequencing, 3 parallel threads (surveys · infrastructure · book draft).
Principia — research program
The construct-family roadmap, sequenced by literature density and measurement-model maturity. This is what gets surveyed, in what order, and why.
Three parallel threads
The work runs in three threads concurrently:
- Construct-family surveys — the bulk of the work. One construct family at a time, end-to-end, before moving to the next.
- Infrastructure — the queryable database (Postgres + API), the
@measurement/coreconsumer wiring, the verification log surface, the book renderer. - Book draft — assembled from completed surveys. Each completed survey is a chapter draft; the introductory and synthesis chapters are written last.
The surveys lead. Infrastructure follows enough to support the surveys. The book trails — it is the last rendering, not the first deliverable.
Construct-family roadmap
Sequenced by literature density and measurement-model maturity (see methodology.md §4 for the rationale).
Tier 1 — foundational constructs (densest literatures)
| # | Family | Why first | Anchor instruments |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Engagement | Densest accumulated literature; methodology proof-of-method. Three measurement traditions in tension (Schaufeli's UWES, Kahn's qualitative tradition, the practitioner-survey tradition) — surveying engagement is itself a methodology contribution. | UWES, Gallup Q12, MEI, JES |
| 2 | Job satisfaction | Long history; classic measurement-model debates (global vs facet; affective vs cognitive). | JDI, MSQ, JSS, Brief Index |
| 3 | Organizational commitment | Tripartite measurement model (Allen & Meyer affective/continuance/normative) is canonical and well-tested. | OCQ, TCM (Allen & Meyer) |
| 4 | Organizational climate | Multiple traditions (climate vs culture; specific climates: safety, service, innovation, justice). Survey clarifies the ontology. | OCDQ, Litwin & Stringer, climate-for-X variants |
Tier 2 — derivative constructs (rest on tier 1 scaffolding)
| # | Family | Why second |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | Organizational justice | Distributive / procedural / interactional / informational measurement model is dense and well-validated. |
| 6 | Psychological safety | Edmondson 1999 onwards. Construct is dense; instruments cluster around a core. |
| 7 | Perceived organizational support | SPOS family. Tight literature; clean validation work. |
| 8 | Work-related stress, strain, burnout | MBI, OLBI, BAT. Construct boundaries against engagement matter — the survey adjudicates. |
Tier 3 — composite constructs (heterogeneous, require disambiguation)
| # | Family | Why third |
|---|---|---|
| 9 | Leadership | Transformational, transactional, authentic, servant, ethical, charismatic — overlapping instruments, contested measurement-model assumptions. The survey provides the disambiguation. |
| 10 | Performance | Task / contextual / counterproductive / adaptive. Multi-source rating, behaviorally-anchored vs trait-rated debates. |
| 11 | Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) | Heterogeneous taxonomy; overlap with contextual performance; survey clarifies. |
Tier 4 — outcomes (covered after antecedents land)
| # | Family | Why fourth |
|---|---|---|
| 12 | Turnover (intent and actual) | Surveyed after antecedents are in place so the predictor-outcome rows have a target schema. |
| 13 | Withdrawal behaviors | Lateness, absenteeism, work-effort reduction. |
| 14 | Counterproductive work behavior (CWB) | Adjacent to performance and OCB; surveyed alongside them. |
Tier 5 — adjacent / methodology
| # | Family | Why surveyed at all |
|---|---|---|
| 15 | Psychological capital (PsyCap) | Composite of hope, efficacy, resilience, optimism. Surveyed because the composite measurement model is itself a methodology case study. |
| 16 | Person-environment fit family | Person-job, person-organization, person-supervisor, person-group fit. The measurement model varies more than the literature acknowledges; surveying clarifies. |
| 17 | Work design / job characteristics | JDS, WDQ. Foundation for predictor variables in many of the above families. |
Open / queued for sequencing decision
- Innovation, creativity at work
- Identification (organizational, occupational, team)
- Trust (organizational, supervisor, team)
- Voice and silence
- Workplace incivility, harassment, mistreatment
- Diversity climate and related workplace-experience constructs
- Compensation justice and pay-related attitudes (intersects directly with AnyComp on the People Analytics Platform)
Per-family work-product
Every construct-family survey ships the same artifact:
- Construct definition + history — what it is, where it came from, the measurement-model debates that shaped how it gets measured today
- Instrument inventory — every instrument that has measured the construct, with item-level schemas (item text, response options, scale anchors, reverse-coding, scoring rules)
- Reliability / validity evidence — per instrument, cited from the validation literature, source-graded
- Effect-size table — the construct's predictors and outcomes, with study-quality grades, replication status, and population notes
- Cross-cultural notes — where the construct travels, where it does not
- Operational notes for builders — implementation pitfalls, common errors, instrument-choice guidance
- Threats and limitations — coverage bias, extraction-error risk, author-position notes
The first survey (engagement) doubles as the methodology proof-of-method. Its threats-and-limitations section will be more elaborate than later surveys' because it documents the methodology's own first-pass mistakes.
Sequencing constraints
Several construct families wait on @measurement/core extraction (vela ASN-1013) because their effect-size tables cannot land in a typed registry that does not yet exist. Until the package extracts, surveys produce drafts in markdown and Construct / Instrument / Item surrogates that match the meta-factory schema names; once @measurement/core lands, a single import-rewrite sweep migrates all surveys to canonical types.
The construct-family ordering is also subject to external pull. If the People Analytics Platform's Calculus or AnyComp work needs a specific construct surveyed before the foundational order would otherwise reach it, the construct-family ordering re-sequences. The roadmap is durable; it is not rigid.
What this is not a roadmap for
- Empirical research on these constructs. Original research happens in Vela, the People Analytics Platform, and Fourth & Two. Principia surveys; the apps test.
- Instrument creation. Principia indexes existing instruments; it does not develop new ones. Where coverage gaps exist (Mike's adaptive-measurement work in Vela's Reincarnation engine is one example), Principia will register the new instrument once it has primary validation evidence.
- Replication studies. Principia surfaces replication status as a column in the effect-size table; it does not run replications. Replications are research-app work.
Status
Tier 1 — engagement queued as the first survey, blocked on @measurement/core extraction. See PIPELINE_STATUS.md.