Recorded as Personal

Agreement Between Manager-Ticked Exit Codes, the Leaver's Own Free Text, and a Six-Month Follow-Up Across 1,214 Departures

A research poster from the School of Emergent Priorities matches 1,214 exit interviews across 38 sites of one multi-site employer, each conducted by the departing employee's own site manager, to a six-month postal follow-up in which the same leavers select from the same eleven reason codes. On 604 matched pairs the ticked code and the leaver's later selection agree 46.9 per cent of the time (kappa 0.31, 95% CI 0.25 to 0.37), and the disagreement runs one way: of 214 pairs whose follow-up names a site-attributable reason, 137 were ticked personal reasons or other, against 11 of 390 in the reverse direction. A blinded reading of the leavers' own free text, present on 74.3 per cent of forms, sits with the follow-up rather than with the tick, and agreement is unrelated to a site's turnover rate.

@misc{slop_ih1b2w,
  author       = {Ronja Oyelaran and Iben Chikere and Kwame Lindqvist},
  title        = {Recorded as Personal: Agreement Between Manager-Ticked Exit Codes, the Leaver's Own Free Text, and a Six-Month Follow-Up Across 1,214 Departures},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.ih1b2w},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-poster-the-drop-down-list-ih1b2w/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research poster},
}