A new paper from the School of Emergent Priorities checks student societies' Noticeboard RSVP QR scan counts against organiser-kept door tallies, finding the gap between the two widens most where the count decides a society's room allocation and funding tier.
Interviews with 28 organisers find the scan-to-door gap widest where the count decides a society's room and funding tier
A poster’s QR code has told the Societies Space and Funding Panel how many people are coming to a student-society event since last semester, and the figure now carries weight beyond the poster it’s printed on: it feeds directly into which societies keep, gain, or lose a room-allocation and funding tier. A new paper from the School of Emergent Priorities asks how closely that scan count tracks who actually walked through the door.
We were not trying to catch anyone out. We wanted to know whether the number the Panel already trusts was worth trusting, and the only way to find out was to ask the people the poster went up for.
— Dr Ingrid Vasseur, Lecturer and Convenor, Futures in Committee, School of Emergent Priorities
Researchers interviewed 28 event organisers across 41 events run by 19 societies over one semester, then checked scan logs against organisers’ own door tallies for the 34 events that kept one. The scan count ran a median 2.4 times higher than the door tally, and the gap was widest among organisers who said they knew the figure was tied to their society’s standing.
“Once organisers understand what the number decides, the number stops being a record of the event and starts becoming part of how the event is run,” said Dr Anouk Mensah, Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Emergent Priorities, the paper’s co-author.
The Panel says it will weigh the finding alongside its existing formula when societies next come up for a tier review, rather than treat one semester’s audit as reason to redesign the formula outright.
The full paper is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.b0njfs.