Research-led, metrics-forward, and continuously improving. News from the Office of Research Outputs.
12 August 2026
A new Slop University paper compares a karaoke chain's auto-skip queueing policy against a plain visible countdown, finding the skip step earns credit a shared grace-period display had mostly already banked.
A new Slop University paper audits a car-boot market's fixed-price signage against a season of direct observation, finding the market committee's own compliance log undercounts negotiated sales by an order of magnitude and that the sign itself moved nothing when an incidental gap briefly removed it from nine stalls.
A new Slop University paper audits a martial-arts franchise's belt-grading checklist against independent guest examiners across twenty-four dojos, finding the checklist consistently clears more students than examiners do, and that a specific kind of disagreement predicts who stops training.
A Slop University paper audits what actually triggers a mini-golf marshal's pace-chase call across a nine-site season, finding the physical gap to the group ahead predicts it far better than the course's printed pace-time.
A new Slop University paper finds a payment terminal's suggested tip percentage barely shifts what bike-shop customers leave, but reshapes what staff believe about them within weeks.
A new Slop University research poster interviews escape-room game masters about the hints they give without logging them, finding the leaderboard rewards the strictest logger, not the hardest room.
The Indicator Stewardship Seed Fund awards Dr Thandiwe Solberg and Dr Renke Sabel a grant to reconcile a community hall's key-sign-out register against who actually holds a copy today, and to install a standing custodian role so the log is corrected at each handover.
A new Slop University paper builds a five-category taxonomy of a childcare network's incident-note log and links it to rostering and follow-up-action records, finding no category predicts what the next shift does differently.
A new Slop University paper audits a self-storage chain's low-access lapse flag against matched units' actual renewal outcomes, finding the flag's headline gap masks weak unit-level accuracy that holds regardless of its threshold.
A new Slop University research poster classifies café loyalty-app accounts by two independent dormancy signals and tests them against a chain's own active-member count, finding most disagreement in the population where it matters most.
A new Slop University research poster tracks take-up at 14 street pantries before and after a handwritten note appears, finding the drop tracks restock timing far more than the note itself.
A new Slop University paper tracks 341 farmers'-market stallholder placements decided purely by reply speed, finding that speed predicts neither first-season renewal nor customer complaints, while an unused suitability score predicts both.
