@psndcsrv That makes sense. I was trying to keep the same functionality as https://github.com/concord-consortium/rigse/blob/36fc1e6a9d39e3193868c915ea78f5e32b51c8d5/spec/integration/dataservice/dataservice_buckets_spec.rb#L12, whereby asking for an empty bucket still returns something, but you're right, it's different -- in the one case every learner has a bucket, even if it's empty, whereas in this new case I'm creating new buckets unnecessarily.