A new Slop University research poster reconstructs a food relief network's annual meals provided figure from consignment records and finds one donor's collection schedule carrying 0.613 of its year to year variance, against 0.111 for the four inputs the network itself controls.
A variance decomposition across 34 agency sites and 21,412 consignments puts a single bakery's collection schedule at 0.613 of the figure's movement
The School of Continuous Improvement has spent much of the past decade asking what an institution’s own numbers are actually made of. Its latest answer concerns a figure published by food relief networks everywhere: meals provided.
Most of the Movement Is One Bakery, released today through the Office of Research Outputs, rebuilds that figure from the consignment records beneath it and then apportions its movement across every input that feeds it. One donor’s bakery-surplus collection schedule carries a total-effect index of 0.613. Volunteer sorting hours, new-donor recruitment, agency site count and cold-storage capacity carry 0.111 between them.
We set out to explain a number and finished up describing a delivery round. That is not a criticism of anyone’s programme; it is a reminder that our instruments have suppliers, and this School is still learning to ask who they are.
— Dr Bram Ntuli, Lecturer and Convenor, Improvement Grand Rounds
The study pairs weighbridge and pallet manifests from 34 agency sites with the network’s own published conversion rate, holding the site set and the reporting calendar fixed, and apportions the resulting variance by established sensitivity-analysis methods. Reconstruction tracked the published figure to within 2.1 per cent across both reporting years.
“A network can be doing more every year and reporting something else entirely,” said Dr Osei Vandermeer, Research Fellow and Convenor of the Review Cadence Observatory. “Neither of those is a fault. They are simply different questions.”
The University regards the work as characteristic of the attention it would like its indicator research to be known for, and as a contribution to the evaluation-ecosystem agenda both schools now share. The full poster is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.wdtr79.