What the Tally Never Asked

An Interview Study of How Playground Supervisors Notice a Lonely Child, Against What a Buddy-Bench Uptake Count Reports

A research poster from the School of Continuous Improvement interviews 48 playground supervisors across nineteen primary schools on what actually tips them off that a child needs company at recess, comparing eleven schools that keep a formal buddy-bench uptake tally against eight that don't. Supervisors at tally-keeping schools name the tally itself as their trigger in under one coded transcript in ten, while their own unprompted observation leads both groups almost identically regardless of whether a tally is kept at all.

@misc{slop_nuuzxk,
  author       = {Dagny Okafor and Ingeborg Nwachukwu},
  title        = {What the Tally Never Asked: An Interview Study of How Playground Supervisors Notice a Lonely Child, Against What a Buddy-Bench Uptake Count Reports},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.nuuzxk},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-poster-interviewing-playground-nuuzxk/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research poster},
}