Just a comment on the reference to the EA Survey numbers. As I discussed here, because the EA Survey’s question about race/ethnicity was multi-select, the percentages of respondents selecting each category can’t be straightforwardly converted into percentages “identif[ying] with non-white race or ethnicity.” We used multi-select to allow people to indicate complex plural identities, without forcing people to select more fixed categories, but it doesn’t allow for particularly simple bench-marking if you want a binary white/non-white distinction. In the next survey we’ll consider adding a further question with more fixed options. It’s more accurate to describe our data as showing that 13.1% of respondents did not indicate white identity at all, 80.5% exclusively selected white and a further 6.4% selected both white and other identities. Unfortunately, interpreting this last category in terms of an interest in a white/non-white binary is fraught, since it’s unclear whether these individuals would identify as “mixed race”, white, non-white or a “person of colour.” Of note, despite Asian being the most common identity other than white selected for this question, the most common selection within this ‘mixed’ category, was White and Hispanic (and the relationship between Hispanic identity and ethnicity/race is not straightforward.
As such, in a more expensive sense, the total “non-white” percentage may be higher, up to around 20%.
Regarding the broader claim that:
“The goal of the survey was to solicit the experiences of people from ethnic minorities in EA. The survey seems to have achieved this goal compared to the annual EA survey, a much higher proportion of respondents to this survey were non-white.”
I agree the percentages of non-white/white respondents is a bit higher in the dedicated “Ethnic Diversity” survey, but you had around 10x fewer ethnically diverse respondents expressing views overall, so this is not a clear win. The percentage difference could be explained entirely by white EAs thinking “This survey isn’t really for me.” A survey specifically about ethnic diversity seems particularly likely to skew towards respondents (both white and non-white) with a particular interest in the topic too, which is probably of particular significance when we’re dealing with only around 30-36 respondents. That said, I agree this is an important source of more qualitative data than we could gather with the EA Survey!
Hi David, thanks for the detailed information—I will make an edit to the text to clarify this point and adjust the wording accordingly so it’s not misleading, upon looking over that phrasing I don’t think I’d use that phrasing even if the percentages were the same.
Regarding your second point, I agree it’s plausible the those who care more about the topic are likely to respond, I mention this in my limitations section and also mention my uncertainties about how much this skews the data.
This survey was not meant to be comprehensive or fully representative of the population in question (I don’t think I make this claim anywhere in the survey, if I do please let me know where) but instead provide some qualitative data to improve the quality of diversity and inclusion discussions and hopefully. As I mention at the beginning, the initial goal was to share this with CEA to give community input on diversity issues, but I’ll edit the text in the write-up to be more consistent with this.
I don’t think this survey is the most valuable piece of research to be done on this topic, but I asked questions that are not asked on the EA survey, which to my knowledge have not been asked in an EA survey before. So I believe that it is still valuable to get some data, both on experiences of non-white respondents but also general attitudes and beliefs on this topic, rather than relying purely on anecdotal evidence while having diversity discussions.
Finally, I hope this survey might help further efforts in this space be a little more structured or productive, which is why I suggested “Possible Themes To Explore”.
Thanks Vaidehi. I agree that this is still useful information, I was simply responding to your direct comparison to the EA Survey (“The survey seems to have achieved this goal [solicit the experiences of people from ethnic minorities in EA] compared to the annual EA survey, a much higher proportion of respondents to this survey were non-white.”).
By the way if you have specific questions that you would like us to include in the EA Survey please let us know (though no hurry).
Thanks for the post!
Just a comment on the reference to the EA Survey numbers. As I discussed here, because the EA Survey’s question about race/ethnicity was multi-select, the percentages of respondents selecting each category can’t be straightforwardly converted into percentages “identif[ying] with non-white race or ethnicity.” We used multi-select to allow people to indicate complex plural identities, without forcing people to select more fixed categories, but it doesn’t allow for particularly simple bench-marking if you want a binary white/non-white distinction. In the next survey we’ll consider adding a further question with more fixed options. It’s more accurate to describe our data as showing that 13.1% of respondents did not indicate white identity at all, 80.5% exclusively selected white and a further 6.4% selected both white and other identities. Unfortunately, interpreting this last category in terms of an interest in a white/non-white binary is fraught, since it’s unclear whether these individuals would identify as “mixed race”, white, non-white or a “person of colour.” Of note, despite Asian being the most common identity other than white selected for this question, the most common selection within this ‘mixed’ category, was White and Hispanic (and the relationship between Hispanic identity and ethnicity/race is not straightforward.
As such, in a more expensive sense, the total “non-white” percentage may be higher, up to around 20%.
Regarding the broader claim that: “The goal of the survey was to solicit the experiences of people from ethnic minorities in EA. The survey seems to have achieved this goal compared to the annual EA survey, a much higher proportion of respondents to this survey were non-white.”
I agree the percentages of non-white/white respondents is a bit higher in the dedicated “Ethnic Diversity” survey, but you had around 10x fewer ethnically diverse respondents expressing views overall, so this is not a clear win. The percentage difference could be explained entirely by white EAs thinking “This survey isn’t really for me.” A survey specifically about ethnic diversity seems particularly likely to skew towards respondents (both white and non-white) with a particular interest in the topic too, which is probably of particular significance when we’re dealing with only around 30-36 respondents. That said, I agree this is an important source of more qualitative data than we could gather with the EA Survey!
I would love for there to be an analysis of how demographically diverse core EAs are (high self-reported engagement and/or EA Forum membership).
(I also wrote this here.)
Thanks Jonas! We’ll be discussing this in more detail in our forthcoming post on EA Engagement levels.
Hi David, thanks for the detailed information—I will make an edit to the text to clarify this point and adjust the wording accordingly so it’s not misleading, upon looking over that phrasing I don’t think I’d use that phrasing even if the percentages were the same.
Regarding your second point, I agree it’s plausible the those who care more about the topic are likely to respond, I mention this in my limitations section and also mention my uncertainties about how much this skews the data.
This survey was not meant to be comprehensive or fully representative of the population in question (I don’t think I make this claim anywhere in the survey, if I do please let me know where) but instead provide some qualitative data to improve the quality of diversity and inclusion discussions and hopefully. As I mention at the beginning, the initial goal was to share this with CEA to give community input on diversity issues, but I’ll edit the text in the write-up to be more consistent with this.
I don’t think this survey is the most valuable piece of research to be done on this topic, but I asked questions that are not asked on the EA survey, which to my knowledge have not been asked in an EA survey before. So I believe that it is still valuable to get some data, both on experiences of non-white respondents but also general attitudes and beliefs on this topic, rather than relying purely on anecdotal evidence while having diversity discussions.
Finally, I hope this survey might help further efforts in this space be a little more structured or productive, which is why I suggested “Possible Themes To Explore”.
Thanks Vaidehi. I agree that this is still useful information, I was simply responding to your direct comparison to the EA Survey (“The survey seems to have achieved this goal [solicit the experiences of people from ethnic minorities in EA] compared to the annual EA survey, a much higher proportion of respondents to this survey were non-white.”).
By the way if you have specific questions that you would like us to include in the EA Survey please let us know (though no hurry).