This is very cool. Seems like high fidelity outreach to a highly promising group, done well.
My main concern: how often can this general debate theme be repeated among major debate tournaments? I wonder if this will now not be repeatable for several years.
<<Lesson 5: It may be helpful to design a formal EA-advocacy framework and research agenda. Debate can be a useful case-study for EA-advocacy for the reasons mentioned in this post.>>
I have often thought this. There is a lot of research that seems like it could be useful for EA outreach, e.g. testing the effectiveness of various messaging strategies. There’s some cause area-specific research, but not much that I’m aware of relating to more general EA principles.
<< However, even with the help of fellow EAs, it took us a while to understand how best to measure engagement with EA content. >>
I have also thought this! I created some questions to use in an RCT we are running at Animal Advocacy Careers and lamented that I had a scale to use for “Animal Farming Opposition” (based on factor analysis of Sentience Institute’s surveys) but not “Effective Altruism Inclination” or something similar.
Would be happy to discuss the EA outreach research ideas a bit more if anyone reading this is interested in pursuing (/ collaborating on?) that.
WRT the main concern—we think EA is broad enough to be able to generate a distinct enough set of topics on a yearly basis (or a two years basis).
On discussing the EA outreach research—we would like too! This would probably be most relevant when we conclude the pilot program this summer, so we should keep in touch :)
I saw after writing this comment that Jonas Vollmer’s recent “Some quick notes on ‘effective altruism’” post is filled with people calling for more empirical testing on EA messaging. So perhaps there is both more interest and intent to carry out this sort of research than I previously believed.
This is very cool. Seems like high fidelity outreach to a highly promising group, done well.
My main concern: how often can this general debate theme be repeated among major debate tournaments? I wonder if this will now not be repeatable for several years.
<<Lesson 5: It may be helpful to design a formal EA-advocacy framework and research agenda. Debate can be a useful case-study for EA-advocacy for the reasons mentioned in this post.>> I have often thought this. There is a lot of research that seems like it could be useful for EA outreach, e.g. testing the effectiveness of various messaging strategies. There’s some cause area-specific research, but not much that I’m aware of relating to more general EA principles.
<< However, even with the help of fellow EAs, it took us a while to understand how best to measure engagement with EA content. >> I have also thought this! I created some questions to use in an RCT we are running at Animal Advocacy Careers and lamented that I had a scale to use for “Animal Farming Opposition” (based on factor analysis of Sentience Institute’s surveys) but not “Effective Altruism Inclination” or something similar.
Would be happy to discuss the EA outreach research ideas a bit more if anyone reading this is interested in pursuing (/ collaborating on?) that.
Thanks for the comment!
WRT the main concern—we think EA is broad enough to be able to generate a distinct enough set of topics on a yearly basis (or a two years basis).
On discussing the EA outreach research—we would like too! This would probably be most relevant when we conclude the pilot program this summer, so we should keep in touch :)
I saw after writing this comment that Jonas Vollmer’s recent “Some quick notes on ‘effective altruism’” post is filled with people calling for more empirical testing on EA messaging. So perhaps there is both more interest and intent to carry out this sort of research than I previously believed.