Meaning-preserving changes to prompt formatting changed few-shot accuracy by up to 76 percentage points for LLaMA-2-13B, and which formats work best correlated only weakly between models, which the authors say calls into question comparing models on one fixed prompt format.

SocioLens project,

Claim LD06-SL-C09 (v1.0)

Provenance and status

Claim type: Estimate
Publication status: Eligible for publication, with a qualifier
Verification state: Checked against the abstract of the primary source only. Who checked this claim is not recorded for it; claim checks so far were AI-led, and no person has checked claims against their sources.
Does not license: The size of the effect for current frontier models
Limitations: Read in abstract only; 2023 open models
Source (as cited): Sclar, Choi, Tsvetkov & Suhr, “Quantifying Language Models’ Sensitivity to Spurious Features in Prompt Design,” ICLR 2024, arXiv:2310.11324
Source type: Peer-reviewed conference paper (recorded as “Peer-reviewed conference paper”)
Institutional position: Independent academic
Maturity of the evidence: Mature evidence
Recorded date: 15 October 2026
Currentness / correction: This is the current version. No correction or concern is recorded on its sources.

Sources this version cites

Sclar, Choi, Tsvetkov & Suhr, “Quantifying Language Models’ Sensitivity to Spurious Features in Prompt Design,” ICLR 2024, arXiv:2310.11324 (Peer-reviewed conference paper)
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Version

This page shows version v1.0. Its record never changes, even when newer evidence arrives; the site may add a note to the page or withhold a figure not cleared for public use.

This pinned version is also the current version.

Versions: v1.0 · current

Raw record: every recorded field, with its coded values

All 25 canonical Claim fields, verbatim, with the coded values derived from them. The plain-language labels above are read from these.

Claim type (coded): ESTIMATE (as printed: “ESTIMATE”)
Publication status (coded): ELIGIBLE (QUALIFIED) (as printed: “ELIGIBLE WITH QUALIFIER”)
Verification state (coded): CONTENT_VERIFIED_PRIMARY (ABSTRACT_ONLY)
Source type (coded): PEER_REVIEWED_CONFERENCE_PAPER
Maturity (coded): MATURE

#	Canonical field	Canonical value (verbatim)	Normalized (Claim Value Vocabulary v1.0.2)
1	CLAIM ID	LD06-SL-C09	—
2	PUBLIC-FACING CLAIM	Meaning-preserving changes to prompt formatting changed few-shot accuracy by up to 76 percentage points for LLaMA-2-13B, and which formats work best correlated only weakly between models, which the authors say calls into question comparing models on one fixed prompt format.	—
3	CLAIM TYPE	ESTIMATE	base_types: ESTIMATE
4	RESEARCH STRAND	A — Benchmark validity and measurement	—
5	MATURITY	MATURE	states: MATURE
6	SOURCE	Sclar, Choi, Tsvetkov & Suhr, “Quantifying Language Models’ Sensitivity to Spurious Features in Prompt Design,” ICLR 2024, arXiv:2310.11324	source_ids: SRC-SL-SCLAR-CHOI-TSVETKOV-SUHR-ICLR-2024
7	SOURCE TYPE	Peer-reviewed conference paper	classes: PEER_REVIEWED_CONFERENCE_PAPER
8	INSTITUTIONAL POSITION	Independent academic	—
9	SCOPE	Classification and generation tasks in few-shot settings	—
10	DESIGN	Systematic variation of prompt formats	—
11	SAMPLE / DATASET	Many sampled formats per task	—
12	MODEL / TOOL / VERSION	Several widely used open-source models, including LLaMA-2-13B	—
13	COMPARATOR	Alternative plausible formats for the same task	—
14	MAIN RESULT	Up to 76 accuracy points between formats; sensitivity persists with model size, more examples and instruction tuning; format performance weakly correlated between models	—
15	INFERENTIAL TARGET	The stability of a benchmark score under arbitrary evaluation choices	—
16	DOES NOT LICENSE	The size of the effect for current frontier models	—
17	VERIFICATION STATE	CONTENT VERIFIED ABSTRACT	state: CONTENT_VERIFIED_PRIMARY · qualifiers: ABSTRACT_ONLY · verified_by: UNKNOWN
18	LIMITATIONS	Read in abstract only; 2023 open models	—
19	CONTRADICTORY / SUPPORTING SOURCES	The authors propose reporting a range across formats, a measurement repair	—
20	GEOGRAPHY / LANGUAGE	Not checked / English	—
21	DISTRIBUTIONAL LEDGER	Not analysed in this claim	—
22	R01 / FIELD-MAP LINKS	LD-06, D4b	—
23	WHAT WOULD CHANGE THIS CLAIM?	Evidence that current models and harnesses are robust to format	—
24	PUBLICATION STATUS	ELIGIBLE WITH QUALIFIER	state: ELIGIBLE · qualifiers: QUALIFIED
25	RECORDED DATE	2026-10-15	—

Field 22 references resolved against Field Map v0.2: LD-06 (LIVING_DEBATE); D4b (SUB_AREA)

The sources as recorded, with their record IDs and coded source types:

Pinned Sources (field 6, version-specific)

“Sclar, Choi, Tsvetkov & Suhr, “Quantifying Language Models’ Sensitivity to Spurious Features in Prompt Design,” ICLR 2024, arXiv:2310.11324” → Sclar et al. (2024), “Quantifying Language Models’…” (SRC-SL-SCLAR-CHOI-TSVETKOV-SUHR-ICLR-2024--v1.0) — Sclar, Choi, Tsvetkov & Suhr, “Quantifying Language Models’ Sensitivity to Spurious Features in Prompt Design,” ICLR 2024, arXiv:2310.11324; class PEER_REVIEWED_CONFERENCE_PAPER (explicit public provenance pin)

Cited by Living Debate versions

The evaluation apparatus: Can benchmarks, leaderboards and audits carry the weight placed on them? (v0.1) LD-06

Cite this page

SocioLens project. (2026, October 15). Meaning-preserving changes to prompt formatting changed few-shot accuracy by up to 76 percentage points for LLaMA-2-13B, and which formats work best correlated only weakly between models, which the authors say calls into question comparing models on one fixed prompt format [Claim LD06-SL-C09, version v1.0]. SocioLens. https://sociolens-web.pages.dev/claims/ld06-sl-c09/v1.0/

@misc{sociolens_ld06_sl_c09_v1_0,
  author = {{SocioLens project}},
  title = {Meaning-preserving changes to prompt formatting changed few-shot accuracy by up to 76 percentage points for LLaMA-2-13B, and which formats work best correlated only weakly between models, which the authors say calls into question comparing models on one fixed prompt format.},
  year = {2026},
  date = {2026-10-15},
  howpublished = {\url{https://sociolens-web.pages.dev/claims/ld06-sl-c09/v1.0/}},
  note = {Claim LD06-SL-C09, version v1.0}
}

The link points to this version, whose record never changes. For a finding, cite the original study as well: SocioLens summarizes research and does not replace it.

Research-of-record provenance

Materialized by sociolens-materializer 0.6.0 at 2026-09-28T20:00:00.000Z; normalization contract SocioLens — Claim Value Vocabulary v1.0.2 — Pre-Spike Materialization Contract (v1.0.2). Content seal SHA-256 f9ed22de67e436633be09fa9e55082397fff08ed08998d2ff90d46c27dd993a6.

Repository-authored inputs (not Drive exports)

SocioLens claim — LD06-SL-C09 v1.0 (v1.0) — written in the SocioLens repository by Project Lead (Claude, AI) on 2026-10-15; no Drive identity exists. Authority: AGENTS.md "Authority" (the Project Lead decides research content within the research-integrity rules) and the Owner's choice in the SocioLens project chat on 15 October 2026 to build the LD-06 debate; a new Claim, first version, written from the project's LD-06 source notes, checked against full texts or official abstracts. Block “ENTRY 09 — LD06-SL-C09” SHA-256 bae3f2ff749552d988a6ddd0556f89eb8a2a8bead276f02be7ffabae54855b4c; fixture fixtures/authored/claims/LD06-SL-C09--v1.0.

Builder decisions (not Drive data)

VERSION = v1.0 — basis: Claim version taken from the repository-authored claim fixture version (SocioLens claim — LD06-SL-C09 v1.0); the first version of a new Claim of the LD-06 debate
CURRENT_POINTER = true — basis: repository-authored claim "SocioLens claim — LD06-SL-C09 v1.0" (Project Lead (Claude, AI), 2026-10-15); basis: AGENTS.md "Authority" (the Project Lead decides research content within the research-integrity rules) and the Owner's choice in the SocioLens project chat on 15 October 2026 to build the LD-06 debate; a new Claim, first version, written from the project's LD-06 source notes, checked against full texts or official abstracts
FIELD_6_SOURCE_REFERENCE = SRC-SL-SCLAR-CHOI-TSVETKOV-SUHR-ICLR-2024--v1.0 — basis: field 6 of ENTRY 09 — LD06-SL-C09 cites "Sclar, Choi, Tsvetkov & Suhr, “Quantifying Language Models’ Sensitivity to Spurious Features in Prompt Design,” ICLR 2024, arXiv:2310.11324"; the only field-6 segment of this ClaimVersion's repository-authored ledger block.
SOURCE_PROVENANCE_PIN = SRC-SL-SCLAR-CHOI-TSVETKOV-SUHR-ICLR-2024--v1.0 — basis: explicit version-pinned public provenance of this ClaimVersion (Amendment v1.2 §6): the pinned field-6 Source record "Sclar, Choi, Tsvetkov & Suhr, “Quantifying Language Models’ Sensitivity to Spurious Features in Prompt Design,” ICLR 2024, arXiv:2310.11324".