Agreeing With the Sheet

Anchoring on the Recorded First Reading Inflates the Repeatability of Manual Groundwater-Level Measurement

An experimental psychology paper from the Schools of Underlying Conditions and Continuous Improvement has 40 operators make 1,440 duplicate dips in a transducer-logged test standpipe, with the first reading hidden, shown, or shown displaced by 12 mm before the check dip. Showing the first reading halves the spread of duplicate differences and makes almost a third of pairs identical while improving accuracy far less, a displaced reading draws the check 0.41 of the way toward it in experienced and novice operators alike, and the intraclass correlation reads 0.99999 throughout; the authors recommend that the check be made blind.

@misc{slop_bk5lf1,
  author       = {Vigdis Emenike and Mirela Hanke},
  title        = {Agreeing With the Sheet: Anchoring on the Recorded First Reading Inflates the Repeatability of Manual Groundwater-Level Measurement},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.bk5lf1},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-the-previous-reading-bk5lf1/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}