> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.multitudes.com/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://docs.multitudes.com/metrics-and-definitions/people-metrics/collaboration/pr-participation-gap.md).

# PR Participation Gap

![A stylized line graph shows time to merge is high at 18 hours but is trending up.](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/610c8a14b4df1ae46b1a13a3/634800eb51d56a1a8ed35992_Participation%20Gap.jpg)

**What it is:** This shows the absolute difference between the most and least frequent commenters on the team.**‍**

**Why it matters:** This measure shows how imbalanced team participation is in reviews and comments. More balanced participation is a behavioral indicator of psychological safety, which [Google’s Project Aristotle research](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-learned-from-its-quest-to-build-the-perfect-team.html) showed is the number one determinant of team performance.

**How we calculate it:**  We count the **number of comments that each person has written and then show the range** from the highest count to the lowest count.

* We exclude team members who wrote zero comments, because sometimes teams will have a few team members who are not on GitHub often, but included in the data.
* We can only calculate this for teams with at least 2 people; for a team of one person, there is no gap to calculate.
* We include comments on all PRs, including draft and open PRs. This is because it’s still someone giving feedback / sharing knowledge with someone else, even if the PR is still in a draft state.

{% hint style="success" %}
**What good looks like**

The smaller the gaps are, the better – a smaller gap means that people are contributing more equally. Looking at distributions of participation gaps each week across various teams and organizations, we found that a threshold difference of 25 comments would be a reasonably realistic goal for most teams.
{% endhint %}