A stepped-wedge poster from the School of Emergent Priorities finds a self-declared return-by tag makes gym-goers wait longer for someone to check an unattended locker, not shorter.
A stepped-wedge deployment across six suburban gyms ties a return-by tag to longer waits before anyone steps in
The Trajectory Analytics Group’s interest in how a commitment survives past its own scoping doesn’t usually take it into a gym change room. A new research poster from the School of Emergent Priorities, published today by the Office of Research Outputs, follows a self-declared return-by tag through a twelve-week deployment across six suburban gyms, timing how long an unattended locker actually goes before somebody steps in.
The project extends the University’s standing interest in what a commitment’s own scope comes to mean once resourcing — in this case, someone else’s patience — has already decided its shape.
A stepped-wedge design staggered the tag’s rollout fortnightly across the six sites, so each gym contributed both a pre-tag and a post-tag observation window. Locker banks were photographed at intervals through evening peak, and every unattended claim was timed from first appearance to the moment staff or another member acted.
We keep finding that a declared commitment buys the person who set it more slack, not less. That’s becoming as much a house finding as a locker one.
— Associate Professor Kwame Lindqvist, Director, Master of Priority Studies
“The tag didn’t get anyone back to their locker sooner,” said Dr Anneke Tolan, Senior Research Fellow. “The next deployment tests what happens once the override stops being optional.”
The full poster is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.ff4bid.