Accurate Only in Order

Placement-Suitability Scores, Listing Sequence, and Six-Month Returns Across 6,431 Rehomings at Three Centres

A paper from the School of Emergent Priorities assembles fifty-four months of assessment, listing, adoption, and return records from one regional animal welfare service's three rehoming centres (9,214 assessments, 6,431 dogs listed, 722 returned within six months) and separates what a fifteen-item placement-suitability composite predicts from what it arranges. In routine operation, where the composite sets the order in which animals are photographed and listed, it discriminates return within six months with a c-statistic of 0.708 (95% CI 0.686-0.730), matching the figure the service publishes; among the 604 animals listed during a rolling kennel-block refurbishment, when listing followed block-emptying order instead, it reaches 0.528 (95% CI 0.487-0.569). The composite orders days-to-listing sharply, from a median of 3 days in the top quintile to 23 in the bottom, and conditioning on that interval moves the odds ratio for return per five composite points from 0.62 to 0.94, while removing the five core temperament items changes discrimination by 0.004.

@misc{slop_203dz3,
  author       = {Iben Chikere and Runa Adegoke and Petra Umbile and Verity Marris},
  title        = {Accurate Only in Order: Placement-Suitability Scores, Listing Sequence, and Six-Month Returns Across 6,431 Rehomings at Three Centres},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.203dz3},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-the-kennel-door-card-203dz3/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}