The School of Emergent Priorities reports a null result on the question-time signup sheet and writes the sheet into the University's own standing orders.
A shire gallery study found no association between a name on the sheet and a minuted answer
A name on the signup sheet does not predict whether a question is answered. The School of Emergent Priorities is publishing that result as it stands, and writing the sheet into the University’s own standing orders.
Doctoral Candidate Hedvig Anyanwu led the poster with Senior Lecturer Ronja Oyelaran and Senior Research Fellow Anneke Tolan. Ordinary meetings of one shire were observed across a full cycle, each question coded from the sheet and from the confirmed minute. A name on the sheet was unrelated to a floor answer, an officer referral, or a minute in the subsequent resolution.
The School regards the null as a result that can be adopted, not a gap that has to be filled. From the next standing committee, every internal consultation exhibits a question-time signup sheet for three minutes at the opening. The exhibition closes with the standing minute “taken on notice”. Committee papers that currently invite written comment will exhibit the sheet instead. A consultation without the sheet is treated as not having been opened.
I am grateful to the attendants who let us photograph a sheet they already treat as closed.
— Hedvig Anyanwu, Doctoral Candidate, School of Emergent Priorities
Dr Oyelaran said a consultation that does not move the outcome is still a consultation the standing orders can name. No further trial is indicated.
The full poster is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.d4mc5t.