Treat the requirement as something users will depend on daily. Custom report types define reportable object relationships, including whether the report includes only matching child records or parent records with and without children. The proper configuration is D. Custom Report Type. This is the option that best matches the Salesforce responsibility being tested under Data Modeling and Management.
A practical administrator would confirm the object context, the user action, and whether the result must be stored, calculated, displayed, automated, approved, or deployed. Here the selected answer is the one that acts at the correct point in that chain. It keeps the configuration declarative and avoids inventing a process around a problem that Salesforce already has a native feature to solve.
The rejected choices solve different problems. A (Report Filters) is less defensible because Reporting configuration helps analysis, but it does not enforce the requested record behavior. B (Row-Level Formula) should be rejected because A formula is calculated display logic and cannot always store static values or perform record updates. C (Report Bucket Field) would be fragile here because Reporting configuration helps analysis, but it does not enforce the requested record behavior. The configuration remains understandable for future admins because the decision is visible in metadata rather than buried in a workaround.
---