Art. 6, Vol. 1. – Internal Validity Criteria (IVC) in the TCCR: Inter-level Coherence, Relational Effectiveness, and Relational Justice as a Methodological Standard for Professional Intervention

This article formalizes the Internal Validity Criteria (IVC) as a methodological standard for professional intervention within the Cognosystemic Theory of Human Psychosocial Relational Construction (TCCR). Its purpose is to delimit the conditions under which a diagnostic reading, a hypothesis of change, a technical decision, or an intervention action may be considered internally valid within the cognosystemic framework. Through a theoretical-conceptual formalization study, the article reconstructs the methodological problem that arises when the TCCR is applied merely as a descriptive vocabulary, without ensuring traceability between data, interpretations, decisions, and observable effects. As a result, three substantive and inseparable criteria are established: Inter-level Coherence, which evaluates the narrative coupling among the relevant levels of the Cognosystem—micro, meso, exo, and macro, depending on the configuration under analysis; Relational Effectiveness, which examines the intervention’s capacity to reconfigure relational patterns through trust, coordination, recognition, and conflict governance; and Relational Justice, which verifies the effective distribution of voice, influence, recognition, and procedural equity. The proposal links these criteria to the cognosystemic hypothesis of change, the intervention cycle, the Data → Meaning → Decision → Effect traceability pathway, the Validation Matrix, the 0–4 scale, and the principle of the “strong minimum.” It is concluded that the IVC make it possible to distinguish a merely nominal intervention from a cognosystemically consistent intervention by requiring continuity among diagnosis, mediations, indicators, effects, and accumulable learning. Their contribution strengthens the applied dimension of the TCCR, particularly for Social Work and related fields, by providing a traceable, auditable, revisable, and ethically oriented methodological foundation for evaluating the internal quality of professional intervention.