Let’s research some impactful interventions! Would you come to an intervention evaluation 101 learning-together event in London?
I want to run an event where we get together and do some quick-and-dirty intervention evaluation research, to learn more about how it works. I know nothing about this so we’ll be learning together!
Where: (central?) London When: a mutually-agreed weekend day What: I’ll come up with a structure loosely based on (some stages of?) the AIM/Charity Entrepreneurship research process. We’ll research and compare different interventions addressing the same broad problem or cause area. For example, we might start by quickly ranking or whittling down a long list in the morning, and then do some deeper dives in the afternoon. We’ll alternate between doing independent research and discussing that research in pairs or small groups.
If you’re interested in coming, please DM me: I’ll use a WhatsApp chat to coordinate. No need to firmly commit at this stage!
Why? I hope to:
-Better understand how charity evaluators and incubators such as GiveWell and AIM form their recommendations, so I feel more empowered to engage with their research and can identify personal cruxes
-Learn how to assess interventions in areas that I think are promising, but that haven’t been discussed or researched extensively by EAs
-Just learn more about the world?
The event could also be useful for people who want to test their fit for EA research careers, though that’s not my own motivation.
What cause area? We’d vote on a cause area beforehand. My vision here is something like ‘an area in global health and development that seems very important, but that hasn’t been discussed, or has been discussed relatively minimally, by EAs’.
What next? If this goes well, we could hold these events regularly and/or collaborate and co-work on more substantive research projects.
Is there a point to this? AIM’s process takes ~1300 hours and is undertaken by skilled professional researchers; obviously we’re not going to produce recommendations of anywhere near similar quality. My motivation is to become personally better-informed and better-engaged with the nitty gritty of EA/being impactful in the world, rather than to reinvent the GiveWell wheel. That said, we’re stronger together: if 50 people worked on assessing a cause area together, they’d only have to spend 26 hours each to collectively equal the AIM process. 26 hours isn’t trivial (and nor is 50 people), but it’s not crazy implausible either. If collectives of EAs are putting AIM-level amounts of hours into intervention evaluation in their spare time, seems like a win?
Let’s research some impactful interventions! Would you come to an intervention evaluation 101 learning-together event in London?
I want to run an event where we get together and do some quick-and-dirty intervention evaluation research, to learn more about how it works. I know nothing about this so we’ll be learning together!
Where: (central?) London
When: a mutually-agreed weekend day
What: I’ll come up with a structure loosely based on (some stages of?) the AIM/Charity Entrepreneurship research process. We’ll research and compare different interventions addressing the same broad problem or cause area. For example, we might start by quickly ranking or whittling down a long list in the morning, and then do some deeper dives in the afternoon. We’ll alternate between doing independent research and discussing that research in pairs or small groups.
If you’re interested in coming, please DM me: I’ll use a WhatsApp chat to coordinate. No need to firmly commit at this stage!
Why?
I hope to:
-Better understand how charity evaluators and incubators such as GiveWell and AIM form their recommendations, so I feel more empowered to engage with their research and can identify personal cruxes
-Learn how to assess interventions in areas that I think are promising, but that haven’t been discussed or researched extensively by EAs
-Just learn more about the world?
The event could also be useful for people who want to test their fit for EA research careers, though that’s not my own motivation.
What cause area?
We’d vote on a cause area beforehand. My vision here is something like ‘an area in global health and development that seems very important, but that hasn’t been discussed, or has been discussed relatively minimally, by EAs’.
What next?
If this goes well, we could hold these events regularly and/or collaborate and co-work on more substantive research projects.
Is there a point to this?
AIM’s process takes ~1300 hours and is undertaken by skilled professional researchers; obviously we’re not going to produce recommendations of anywhere near similar quality. My motivation is to become personally better-informed and better-engaged with the nitty gritty of EA/being impactful in the world, rather than to reinvent the GiveWell wheel.
That said, we’re stronger together: if 50 people worked on assessing a cause area together, they’d only have to spend 26 hours each to collectively equal the AIM process. 26 hours isn’t trivial (and nor is 50 people), but it’s not crazy implausible either. If collectives of EAs are putting AIM-level amounts of hours into intervention evaluation in their spare time, seems like a win?
Great idea!
If it’d be helpful, I ran a 4 session workshop for people in my local community on “EA research methods”: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VQfVbZSZow_Oq24cnRQpFzykHzIdcG8Jmjx6ctRFxRg/edit#heading=h.e6lzi7r45ez
I think SoGood ran similar things.
do you mean SoGive?
Sorry, that’s the name.
Brother been appreciating his plant based milks ;)
https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=f7a1df2a53b528d6&sxsrf=ADLYWII7o_lk7-3eMnXGuQOwgH5tQWRlgA:1718016822276&q=So+good+soy+milk&spell=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjPvqOz79CGAxU7U0EAHUBiA2UQBSgAegQICxAB&biw=1236&bih=687&dpr=2