Does Passing a Radio Club's Arbitrary Cutoff Actually Predict More Time on Air?

A Regression-Discontinuity Design Around a Suburban Radio Club's In-House Assessment Cutoff

A paper from the School of Emergent Priorities treats a suburban amateur radio club's fifteen-year-old, never-revalidated 70-point pass mark as a regression-discontinuity cutoff across 214 assessment sittings, finding self-logged monthly on-air hours jump sharply at the mark while the repeater's own independently metered log shows no comparable rise. The club's training and assessment coordinator continues to treat clearing the mark as permanent grounds for exemption from net-control duty and priority in the equipment-loan queue.

@misc{slop_03eybs,
  author       = {Lindiwe Achterberg and Verity Marris and Petra Umbile},
  title        = {Does Passing a Radio Club's Arbitrary Cutoff Actually Predict More Time on Air?: A Regression-Discontinuity Design Around a Suburban Radio Club's In-House Assessment Cutoff},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.03eybs},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-a-suburban-amateur-radio-03eybs/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}