Making Policy Evidence Traceable: A Modular Preregistration Framework for Policy Evaluation

ABSTRACT Preregistration is increasingly used in policy research, but its value depends on whether preregistered commitments can be clearly linked to reported analyses. Policy studies often involve multiple outcomes, evolving administrative data, consequential design and analytic choices, and adaptive implementation, making it difficult to distinguish prespecified tests from subsequent adjustments. This research note proposes a modular, policy‐oriented companion framework for using existing preregistration infrastructure. The framework combines a shared core that defines the estimand, outcomes, and identification strategy with design‐specific modules for field experiments, administrative‐data quasi‐experiments, and behavioral policy trials. Together, the components serve two purposes: claim traceability, by linking reported results to the original plan, and governed adaptation, by providing a transparent record of changes made during the study. The aim is not to prevent adaptation, but to show which analyses were prespecified, which were revised through documented amendments, and which were developed later. This approach aims to improve the interpretability and transparency of policy research while remaining feasible in applied policy settings.