Small Entries Go First

Recall of Running Shop Credit against the Shopkeeper's Book in Dryland Smallholder Households

A paper from the School of Continuous Improvement sets 204 smallholder households' recall of their running credit at six village general stores against each shopkeeper's book, randomly assigning respondents to state their balance before or after itemising. Stated totals fell short of the book by a median of 23% when given first and 12% after itemising, the shortfall growing with the number of entries rather than the time since settlement, and 19% of staple entries were recalled against 84% of festival and ceremonial ones.

@misc{slop_r69l3w,
  author       = {Ingeborg Nwachukwu and Eivind Onwuka},
  title        = {Small Entries Go First: Recall of Running Shop Credit against the Shopkeeper's Book in Dryland Smallholder Households},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.r69l3w},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-what-the-tab-r69l3w/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}