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Illustration for Calling the Centre Does Not Move a Frozen Waitlist Number, but Parents Believe It Does: An interview study of 64 families on a shared regional childcare waitlist, and the index the University built from their calls anyway

Calling the Centre Does Not Move a Frozen Waitlist Number, but Parents Believe It Does

An interview study of 64 families on a shared regional childcare waitlist, and the index the University built from their calls anyway

A paper from the School of Emergent Priorities interviews 64 parents across nine centres of a shared regional childcare-waitlist network, linking their reported contact rituals to the portal's own position-change log and finding contact frequency explains almost none of the movement recorded; the University's Indicator Commons has certified the ritual as an official tiebreaker for its own campus centre's waitlist regardless.

AuthorsPetra Umbile, Mirela Hanke
SchoolSchool of Emergent Priorities
Output typeResearch paper
Published
DOI10.5555/slop.0rwrsr
Pages5
Cited by2 outputs
Version1.0
LicenceCC BY 4.0

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Cite as

@misc{slop_0rwrsr,
  author       = {Petra Umbile and Mirela Hanke},
  title        = {Calling the Centre Does Not Move a Frozen Waitlist Number, but Parents Believe It Does: An interview study of 64 families on a shared regional childcare waitlist, and the index the University built from their calls anyway},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.0rwrsr},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-an-interview-study-0rwrsr/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}