Methods acceptable for registration once administrative pre-registration conditions are completed.
C13-1: Resolved. “Competing risks” now requires identical reported interval boundaries across covering arms. This removes ambiguous coordinates and duplicated observations. Specified model implies between-arm covariance [ T=Z,\operatorname{diag}(\tau_1^2,\tau_2^2),Z^{\mathsf T}, ] while retaining within-arm covariance (V_a). Thus both covariance levels are specified, consistent with standard multivariate modeling principles. Jackson, Riley, and White, Section 3.
PR15 and PR16 specify proper priors and sensitivity alternatives. Time units, joint predictive integration, displayed cumulative-incidence summary, and single-arm handling are stated.
Declining unrestricted covariance with an LKJ prior is defensible given few covering arms. Adopted structure imposes proportional arm deviations across intervals and independence between event-specific random effects. These remain substantive modeling assumptions, but are explicit and executable. My proposed unrestricted covariance was one acceptable solution, not a requirement.
C13-2: Resolved. Scenario rules preserve empirical 25th and 75th percentiles of covering arms’ own cumulative incidences. Uncertainty now uses arm-specific draws from (N(y_a,V_a)), followed by integration and recomputation of percentiles. This targets uncertainty in declared scenarios. New-arm predictive draws separately determine pooled reference-profile uncertainty. “Absolute effects” remains consistent with this distinction.
C13-3: Resolved. Within-arm uncertainty now identifies a working normal approximation, states variance approximately (1/d_k), and qualifies zero covariance by stated assumptions. Exponential approximation uses matching wording. Finite-sample exactness is no longer asserted.
New findings: No new major or minor errors, inconsistencies, or non-executable rules requiring correction identified in version 0.14.0. No replacement text required.
Requested documents and tables inspected. Structural checks passed for 637 applicable outcome/population window pairs, all 43 search-agent mappings, and registration identifiers and counts across all 861 registry-candidate rows. Numerical checks confirmed revised covariance construction retains within-arm covariance and single-interval integration agrees with subdivision using identical hazards. These checks establish specification consistency, not fitted-model performance.
Search concepts remain version 1.2.0; concepts and renderer are unchanged from version 0.13.0. Renderer assessment was static, without live database recall testing. Administrative prerequisites remain conditions for registration and do not independently prevent methodological acceptance. No files edited, created, or deleted.
VERDICT: ACCEPT