One easy way you could get a sample that’s both broadly representative and also weights more involved EAs more is to make the survey available to everyone on the forum, but to weight all responses by the square root of the respondent’s karma. Karma is obviously an imperfect proxy, but it seems much easier to get than people’s donation histories, and it doesn’t seem biased in any particular direction. The square root is so that the few people with the absolute highest karma don’t completely dominate the survey.
I think EA Forum karma isn’t the best because a lot of the people who are particularly engaged in EA do not spend much time on the forum and instead focus on more action-relevant things for their org. The EA Forum will be biased towards people more interested in research and community related things as opposed to direct actions. For example, New Incentives is a very EA aligned org in direct poverty, but they spend most of their time doing cash transfers in Nigeria instead of posting on the forum.
To build on your idea though, I think forming some sort of index of involvement would get away from any one particular thing biasing the results. I think including karma in the index makes sense, along with length of involvement, hours per week involved in EA, percent donated, etc.
I’m working on a project to scale up volunteer work opportunities with all kinds of EA organizations. Part of what I wanted to do is develop a system for EA organizations to delegate tasks to volunteers, including writing blog posts. This could help EA orgs like New Incentives get more of their content up on the EA Forum, such as research summaries and progress updates. Do you think orgs would find this valuable.
One easy way you could get a sample that’s both broadly representative and also weights more involved EAs more is to make the survey available to everyone on the forum, but to weight all responses by the square root of the respondent’s karma. Karma is obviously an imperfect proxy, but it seems much easier to get than people’s donation histories, and it doesn’t seem biased in any particular direction. The square root is so that the few people with the absolute highest karma don’t completely dominate the survey.
I think EA Forum karma isn’t the best because a lot of the people who are particularly engaged in EA do not spend much time on the forum and instead focus on more action-relevant things for their org. The EA Forum will be biased towards people more interested in research and community related things as opposed to direct actions. For example, New Incentives is a very EA aligned org in direct poverty, but they spend most of their time doing cash transfers in Nigeria instead of posting on the forum.
To build on your idea though, I think forming some sort of index of involvement would get away from any one particular thing biasing the results. I think including karma in the index makes sense, along with length of involvement, hours per week involved in EA, percent donated, etc.
I’m working on a project to scale up volunteer work opportunities with all kinds of EA organizations. Part of what I wanted to do is develop a system for EA organizations to delegate tasks to volunteers, including writing blog posts. This could help EA orgs like New Incentives get more of their content up on the EA Forum, such as research summaries and progress updates. Do you think orgs would find this valuable.