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).
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).