Methodology

How CLCI scores are built, weighed, contested, and revised. These pages document the editorial and analytic infrastructure behind every group profile so readers, researchers, and the organisations themselves can audit our reasoning.

CLCI Hub publishes a numeric score from 0 to 40 for each group, broken into five spectrum bands from Minimal documented control through Destructive / Extreme. That number is the easy part. The harder, more important part is what sits behind it: the sources, the editorial standards, the band thresholds, the way we handle contested evidence and living people, the conditions under which a score changes, and what we will not change a score for. These methodology pages cover that machinery in detail.

If you are a survivor, family member, or general reader, you do not need to read every page here. The BITE model page explains what each axis measures; the confidence levels page explains what the High/Medium/Low badges mean. Those two are enough to read a group profile critically. The other four pages exist for researchers, journalists, named organisations, and anyone who wants to challenge a specific rating on substantive grounds.

The methodology pages

• The BITE model

  How Steven Hassan's four-axis framework (Behaviour, Information, Thought, Emotional control) is operationalised on CLCI Hub, why each axis runs 0–10, and what the signed Modifier captures.

• Source hierarchy

  How primary, secondary, and tertiary sources are weighted; how court records, government investigations, peer-reviewed work, journalism, books, and ex-member testimony are handled; how contested evidence is presented.

• Confidence levels

  What High, Medium, and Low confidence ratings mean on every group profile, what source mix supports each tier, and why low-confidence ratings are treated as provisional.

• Scoring appeals

  What evidence can change a score, what evidence cannot, how branches and time periods are handled, how reforms are credited, and what to include in a substantive appeal.

• Living persons

  Extra caution applied to claims about living individuals: allegation vs conviction distinction, public-role relevance, right-of-reply routing, and source-strength requirements.

• Score updates over time

  Why scores change: new evidence, leadership changes, reforms, splinter groups, dormant or defunct status. How versioning works and where the public changelog lives.

• Scoring limitations

  What the CLCI score does and does not measure, the uncertainty around any individual rating, and the conditions under which a score should be treated with extra caution.

• Ordinary members policy

  CLCI ratings reflect organisational conduct, not individual members. How the site treats ordinary members of profiled groups and what CLCI content must not be used for.

• Religious neutrality

  CLCI evaluates control patterns, not theology. How the site distinguishes high-control sub-branches from broader traditions and what religious neutrality means in practice.

• Political neutrality

  How the catalogue handles political and ideological groups using the same BITE criteria as any other category, with attention to where political neutrality is hardest to maintain.

• Reforms and score reduction

  What we count as substantive, sustained reform, what evidence we expect, and how a group's score can be reduced when reform is documented.

• Public source limitations

  What is structurally invisible to a public-source catalogue, the biases this introduces, and what readers should infer (and not infer) from sparse entries.

How the methodology relates to the rest of the site

The methodology pages are companion documents to a small set of editorial policies that govern publication itself. The Editorial Policy explains what we will and will not publish and why. The Source Policy is the canonical source-tier document — the Source Hierarchy page here covers the same ground in slightly more detail and includes the contested-evidence handling. The Corrections page is the intake route for factual errors; the Right of Reply page is the intake route for organisational responses.

How the methodology evolves

These pages are living documents. When we tighten a definition, change a band threshold, add a new source category, or revise an editorial standard, the change is logged in the Transparency Report and reflected in the relevant methodology page's last-reviewed date. Earlier methodology versions are recoverable from the public GitHub history.

We invite scrutiny. If you find a methodology page that contradicts how a specific profile was actually scored, or a profile that was scored in a way the methodology does not authorise, that is a meaningful inconsistency — please flag it via the Corrections page. The methodology is intended to be honest about what it can and cannot do.

This site is educational and not legal, medical, or clinical advice. See the Legal Disclaimer for the full statement.