Which of the following operations is likely to cause lock contention?

Creating new users can lead to lock contention because this operation often requires accessing and modifying shared resources within the system. When a user is created, the application may need to check for uniqueness of the username, assign permissions, and update user-related objects, all of which may involve locking portions of the database or other resources to ensure data integrity. If multiple user creation requests occur simultaneously, they may compete for the same locks, leading to contention and potential delays in processing.

In contrast, generating reports, logging out users, and viewing dashboards are typically read operations that do not make changes to the underlying data structure. These operations usually do not cause contention because they can often be performed concurrently without conflicting with each other, as they mainly involve retrieving data rather than modifying it.