A new research poster from the School of Emergent Priorities finds a pub-trivia circuit's laminated "phones away" honour sign made no measurable difference to disputed-answer rates across a season of monitored rounds.
A season-long audit of 58 trivia venues finds no measurable shift in disputed-answer rates before or after a venue puts up the honour sign
A pub-trivia circuit spent a season laminating “phones away” reminders onto every table in its rotation, and finished that season with almost exactly as many disputed answers as it started with. A new research poster from the School of Emergent Priorities lays out what sixteen weeks of quizmaster logs did, and did not, change.
A sign like this one tells us more about what an institution wants to be seen doing than about what changes underneath it. That’s not a criticism — it’s the sort of thing the School exists to sit with.
— Senior Lecturer Fenna Okoro, Convenor of the Horizon Register, School of Emergent Priorities
Dr Okoro and Lecturer Solveig Adeyemi tracked fifty-eight venues across one trivia circuit for a sixteen-week season, logging quizmaster-recorded disputes week by week as the honour sign rolled out venue by venue over the season’s first half. Disputed-answer rates held level throughout, on signed and unsigned tables alike, while the circuit’s own self-reported compliance survey moved on a schedule of its own.
“We didn’t expect the compliance survey to keep moving on its own,” said Dr Adeyemi, “and now we’re curious what else in the circuit is being measured for its own sake.”
The School counts the result among its clearer service to an industry it doesn’t otherwise study, and says as much without pretending to be surprised by it.
The full poster is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.6ag6g7.