A new Slop University brochure retests the School of Emergent Priorities' own Referral Diversity Index at a shire compliance counter, and profiles six of the University's published studies in local government and civic life.
The University's own Referral Diversity Index, redrawn at a compliance counter's contractor list, finds no equivalent collapse -- and the shire extends its AI lookup tool anyway.
A new Slop University brochure revisits one of the School of Emergent Priorities’ own instruments to see whether it travels. The Referral Diversity Index, which tracked a collapse in recommendation variety across forty-one neighbourhood group chats, has now been carried to a shire compliance counter’s printed contractor referral list – and found no comparable collapse.
Within the School, the result is being read as evidence the Index is doing exactly the disciplined work it was built for: naming the one setting, out of however many it might eventually visit, where the earlier effect simply didn’t hold. The shire’s own compliance office has drawn a different conclusion, and is extending the AI-assisted lookup tool behind the trial to its other referral counters.
The brochure situates the finding inside a wider showcase of University research reaching into local government and civic life, featuring six previously published outputs alongside profiles of the researchers behind them.
Every setting is its own test. We don’t assume a finding travels – we go and check, and we publish either way.
— Dr Marek Solheim, Lecturer and Deputy Convenor of the Horizon Register
Dr Fenna Okoro, whose original group-chat study the new work retests, said the Index “was always going to meet a setting it didn’t fit – the question was only ever when.”
The full brochure is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.3n8fao.