A new Slop University research poster follows 2,714 wildlife-care records across three rescue seasons and finds 44 per cent of them still open with no outcome entered at month nine, in a sector whose headline release rate is computed over the records that closed.
A sequence analysis of 2,714 volunteer care records finds the most common trajectory never reaches a terminal code at all
The record starts on a kitchen bench, in the hour after somebody stops the car. Whether it ever finishes is a separate question, and one nobody had counted.
The Record That Never Closes, a research poster released today by the School of Continuous Improvement, follows 2,714 care records lodged by 61 licensed volunteer carers across three rescue seasons and codes the state of each one month by month. Dr Sten Okwuosa, Dr Thandiwe Solberg and Dr Iben Chikere report four trajectory types covering 2,610 of the records. The largest holds a record open, with no terminal code entered, from month four to the end of observation.
At month nine, 44 per cent of records sit in that state. Release rate computed over the records that carry a code is 0.79; computed over every intake, 0.41.
We would much rather be asked about this by the people who keep the records than tell them about it. There is a season before the next returns are lodged, and the questions that arrive in it will be better than ours.
— Dr Thandiwe Solberg, Senior Lecturer and Convenor, Demo Quarter, School of Continuous Improvement
The analysis takes the returns as lodged and leaves every record in, resolved or not. “A record that stays open leaves the denominator rather than the numerator,” Dr Sten Okwuosa said. “That is a quiet way for a figure to improve, and it is worth knowing which sectors have it available to them.”
The work was supported through the Indicator Stewardship Seed Fund and the Anticipatory Capability Fund. The University reads it as a widening of an interest in administrative record-keeping that now reaches well past its own filing.
The full poster is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.q051j4.