Guokao Shenlun (National Civil Service Essay) - independent foundations key terms
Guokao Shenlun (National Civil Service Essay) - independent foundations · Get comfortable with the vocabulary.
- Baseline
The reference condition against which later observations are compared, requiring compatible definitions, populations, periods and measurement procedures.
- Output
A direct activity or product delivered by an organization, distinct from its effect on the people receiving the service.
- Outcome
A change experienced by a relevant population or system, which must be measured separately from the count of administrative activities.
- Attribution
A supported claim about the contribution of an intervention to a change compared with an appropriate alternative explanation or counterfactual.
- Stakeholder
A person or group affected by, contributing to or holding a relevant interest in a decision and its implementation.
- Implementation dependency
A resource, capability, decision or preceding action that must be available for a proposed task to operate as intended.
- Indicator
An explicitly defined measure used to monitor a relevant condition, with its numerator, denominator, observation period and limitations specified.
- Aggregation
Combining observations into a summary while preserving compatible units and avoiding the concealment of important differences between groups.
- Confounding
A situation in which another factor affects the apparent relationship under study and obstructs a straightforward causal interpretation.
- Selection bias
Systematic differences in who enters an observed sample that can make its results misleading for the intended population.
- Counterexample
A concrete instance satisfying a set of premises while contradicting a claimed necessary conclusion, thereby defeating that necessity claim.
- Necessary condition
A condition that must hold if another proposition is true, without necessarily being sufficient to produce that proposition.
- Sufficient condition
A condition whose occurrence entails the specified conclusion within the stated rule, without necessarily being required in every case.
- Evidence traceability
The ability to connect a substantive conclusion to an identified observation, source statement or explicitly qualified analytical inference.
- Root-cause hypothesis
A proposed underlying mechanism that explains a problem and still requires evidence distinguishing it from plausible competing explanations.
- Accessibility
The practical ability of intended users to reach and use a service, including barriers that an overall efficiency average may hide.
- Public communication
Information prepared for an affected audience that clearly separates verified facts, present uncertainty, available assistance and any authorized next steps.
- Decision criterion
A specified consideration used to evaluate alternatives, such as effectiveness, resource use, distributional consequences or accountability under supplied constraints.
- Monitoring
Repeated observation of defined indicators during implementation, useful for detecting change but not automatically establishing causal attribution.
- Argument map
An organized representation of a thesis, supporting reasons, evidence and objections that makes missing inferential links easier to identify.