Treat export as a transformation worth testing
A reviewer can record a careful judgment that disappears during export. A receiving tool might accept only a chosen answer and a rejected answer, while the review system also records ties, shared failures and comparisons lacking essential context.
The engineering question is not simply whether the exported file loads. It is whether each exported record still means what the reviewer decided. Obtain the receiving format's actual requirements: different training and evaluation consumers may support different outcomes. This is proposed technical guidance, not a report of client work or a universal format specification.
Build a small semantic test fixture
Create a synthetic fixture containing one clear example of every supported review outcome. Give each record a stable identifier and keep answer identity separate from screen position.
- P01: A preferred, both acceptable. Export A as chosen if the consumer supports that meaning.
- P02: equal preference, both acceptable. Retain separately or explicitly exclude.
- P03: both answers unacceptable. Preserve failure information rather than inventing a preference.
- P04: essential document missing. Mark unjudgeable rather than turning missing context into a tie.
These are invented test records, not observations from a project. Include another record with the preferred answer displayed second. That tests whether the exporter follows answer identity rather than assuming the first answer won.
Reconcile every input record
Require every input identifier to appear in exactly one documented disposition: exported, retained outside the receiving format, excluded for a stated reason, or rejected as malformed. For a one-record-per-comparison design, input count equals exported plus separately retained plus excluded plus rejected. Make these categories mutually exclusive.
If a transformation creates several rows, document its expected multiplicity and reconcile identifiers as well as row counts. Count reconciliation does not prove semantic correctness, but it exposes unexplained disappearance and duplication.