Whoever Checked the Chat Last

Developing and Validating a Pick-Up Reliance Scale for the School-Gate Handover

A paper from the School of Continuous Improvement develops and validates the Pick-Up Reliance Scale, a twelve-item instrument scoring how much a parent leans on a class group chat over their own memory to manage the school-gate pick-up. Across two independent samples the scale's Handover Deferral items predict how often a household's own pick-up roster is renegotiated after the fact, while the instrument's total score shows no relationship with how often a parent checks their phone in the queue.

@misc{slop_efv97d,
  author       = {Casimir Beng and Mirela Hanke and Iben Chikere},
  title        = {Whoever Checked the Chat Last: Developing and Validating a Pick-Up Reliance Scale for the School-Gate Handover},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.efv97d},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-validating-a-pick-up-efv97d/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}