A new Slop University research poster repeats the University's own successor desire-line study in a second council area and finds fresh worn lines at 26 per cent of sealed shortcuts, against the 71 per cent originally reported.
A pre-registered replication at 84 sealed shortcuts in a second council area puts twelve month recurrence at 26 per cent, against the 71 per cent first reported
A finding Slop University published in July has been run a second time, in a second council area, and has not come out the same way.
The new research poster, from the School of Continuous Improvement, followed 84 verge shortcuts sealed under a council path-formalisation warrant for fourteen months, coding each fortnight for the appearance of a fresh worn line beside the new path. Successor lines appeared at 26 per cent of sites within twelve months. The originating study reported 71 per cent, and its median of eighteen weeks is the figure from which the warrant’s review window was set.
Two studies, run the same way, have given the School two answers, and the interesting work starts there rather than ending there. We expect to be back at these verges with a different qualifying variable.
— Dr Renke Sabel, Senior Lecturer and Convenor of the Indicator Commons
The University counts the re-run itself among the outcomes of the work, and regards a school willing to return to its own published figures as a capability worth sustaining.
The team transferred the originating study’s coding protocol, thresholds and equivalence margin unmodified, and lodged them before the first survey. One pre-specified moderator separated the two data sets: whether the sealed path followed the line people had already worn, or the alignment the works program preferred.
Associate Professor Casimir Beng, who leads the Adaptive Metrics Lab, said the School had learned “as much from the part that did replicate as from the part that did not”.
The full poster is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.yx271i.