Q002 — Self-Audit¶


Research	R0020 — Prompt Engineering Gaps
Run	2026-03-25
Query	Q002

ROBIS 4-Domain Audit¶

Domain 1: Eligibility Criteria¶

Rating: Low risk

Criterion	Assessment
Evidence types defined before searching	Yes — academic papers, vendor docs, practitioner guides targeted
Criteria consistent throughout	Yes — same framework applied to all sources
Scope maintained	Yes — focused on sycophancy discussion in mainstream guides

Notes: Eligibility criteria were stable throughout the research process.

Domain 2: Search Comprehensiveness¶

Rating: Some concerns

Criterion	Assessment
Multiple search strategies used	Yes — two distinct searches
Searches designed to test each hypothesis	Yes — searched both for sycophancy coverage and for its absence
All results dispositioned	Yes — 20 results returned, all dispositioned
Source diversity achieved	Yes — academic (arXiv), UX research (NNG), industry blog

Notes: OpenAI's prompt engineering guide was inaccessible (403), creating a gap in vendor documentation coverage. Google's documentation was not specifically targeted.

Domain 3: Evaluation Consistency¶

Rating: Low risk

Criterion	Assessment
All sources scored using same framework	Yes
Evidence typed consistently	Yes
ACH matrix applied	Yes
Diagnosticity analysis performed	Yes

Notes: The reliability rating difference between academic sources (High) and industry source (Medium-Low) reflects genuine quality differences, not inconsistent evaluation.

Domain 4: Synthesis Fairness¶

Rating: Low risk

Criterion	Assessment
All hypotheses given fair hearing	Yes — H1 received partial support, not dismissed
Contradictory evidence surfaced	Yes — limitations of prompt-level approaches explicitly noted
Confidence calibrated to evidence	Yes — Medium-High reflects strong academic evidence
Gaps acknowledged	Yes — vendor documentation gaps explicitly noted

Notes: Synthesis appropriately weighted academic evidence higher than industry blog content.

Overall Assessment¶

Overall risk of bias: Low risk

The main limitation is incomplete vendor documentation coverage (OpenAI 403, Google not targeted). The academic evidence is strong and provides a solid foundation for the assessment.

Researcher Bias Check¶

Confirmation bias risk: Low. The research surfaced evidence that prompt-level approaches are only partially effective (~29% contribution), which challenges the implicit assumption that prompts can solve sycophancy.
Anchoring bias risk: Some concern. The GPT-4o incident may have anchored expectations that sycophancy is widely discussed, potentially inflating the assessment of mainstream coverage.