Another (and I think better way) of examining whether we are simply sampling fewer people or the population has shrunk is comparing numbers for subpopulations of the EA Survey(s) to known population sizes as we did here.
In 2019, we estimated that we sampled around 40% of the ‘highly engaged’ EA population. In 2020, using updated numbers, we estimated that we sampled around 35% of the highly engaged EA population.
If the true EA population had remained the same size 2019-2020 and we just sampled 35% rather than 40% overall, we would expect the number of EAs sampled in 2020 to decrease from 2513 to 2199 (which is pretty close to the 2166 we actually sampled).
But, as noted, we believe that we usually sample high and low engagement EAs at different rates (sampling relatively fewer less engaged EAs). And, if our sampling rate reduces overall, (a priori) I would expect this to hold up better among highly engaged EAs than among less engaged EAs (who may be less motivated to take the survey and more responsive to the survey becoming too onerous to complete).
The total number of highly engaged EAs in our sample this year was similar/slightly higher than 2019, implying that population slightly increased in size (as I would expect). We don’t have any good proxies for the size of the less engaged EA population (this becomes harder and harder as we consider the progressively larger populations of progressively less engaged EAs), but I would guess that we probably experienced a yet larger reduction in sampling rate for this population, and that the true size of the population of less engaged EAs has probably increased (I would probably look to things like the EA newsletter, subscribers to 80,000 Hours mailing lists and so on for proxies for that group, but Aaron/people at 80K may disagree).
Of course, much of this growth in the number of highly engaged EAs is likely due to EAs becoming more engaged, rather than there becoming more EAs. As it happens, EAS2020 had more 4′s but fewer 5′s, which I think can plausibly be explained by the general reduction in rate of people sampled, mentioned above, but a number of 1-3s moving into the 4 category and fewer 4s moving into the 5 category (which is more stringent, e.g. EA org employee, group leader etc.).
Another (and I think better way) of examining whether we are simply sampling fewer people or the population has shrunk is comparing numbers for subpopulations of the EA Survey(s) to known population sizes as we did here.
In 2019, we estimated that we sampled around 40% of the ‘highly engaged’ EA population. In 2020, using updated numbers, we estimated that we sampled around 35% of the highly engaged EA population.
If the true EA population had remained the same size 2019-2020 and we just sampled 35% rather than 40% overall, we would expect the number of EAs sampled in 2020 to decrease from 2513 to 2199 (which is pretty close to the 2166 we actually sampled).
But, as noted, we believe that we usually sample high and low engagement EAs at different rates (sampling relatively fewer less engaged EAs). And, if our sampling rate reduces overall, (a priori) I would expect this to hold up better among highly engaged EAs than among less engaged EAs (who may be less motivated to take the survey and more responsive to the survey becoming too onerous to complete).
The total number of highly engaged EAs in our sample this year was similar/slightly higher than 2019, implying that population slightly increased in size (as I would expect). We don’t have any good proxies for the size of the less engaged EA population (this becomes harder and harder as we consider the progressively larger populations of progressively less engaged EAs), but I would guess that we probably experienced a yet larger reduction in sampling rate for this population, and that the true size of the population of less engaged EAs has probably increased (I would probably look to things like the EA newsletter, subscribers to 80,000 Hours mailing lists and so on for proxies for that group, but Aaron/people at 80K may disagree).
If the sampling rate of highly engaged EAs has gone down from 40% to 35%, but the number of them was the same, that would imply 14% growth.
You then say:
So the total growth should be 14% + growth in highly engaged EAs.
Could you give me the exact figure?
926 highly engaged in EAS2019, 933 in EAS2020.
Of course, much of this growth in the number of highly engaged EAs is likely due to EAs becoming more engaged, rather than there becoming more EAs. As it happens, EAS2020 had more 4′s but fewer 5′s, which I think can plausibly be explained by the general reduction in rate of people sampled, mentioned above, but a number of 1-3s moving into the 4 category and fewer 4s moving into the 5 category (which is more stringent, e.g. EA org employee, group leader etc.).