Hi Danica, this looks really interesting! A lot of your goals look very tricky to measure, though. How are you hoping to measure the prevalence or geographic spread of EA mental health problems if the survey is taken by volunteers, rather than by randomly chosen community members?
Yes, the validity of geographic spread is limited by the fact that respondents are volunteers. Even so, I believe it will be informative to see if and how access to resources varies in the subset of people the survey reaches. If there are significant differences based on country, for example, that could inform resource distribution in a potential intervention. Of course, it would be important to follow up to confirm that the differences present in the results are representative of the larger population.
Good point, I think you could reframe it to still work: If the goal is to treat mental health issues in EA, the subset of people you could actually reach with treatment is probably fairly similar to the subset that would answer this poll: people that use the Forum.
It probably can’t deliver accurate numbers on prevalence, but it can profile the people it’s targeting on their demographics and desires.
Hi Danica, this looks really interesting! A lot of your goals look very tricky to measure, though. How are you hoping to measure the prevalence or geographic spread of EA mental health problems if the survey is taken by volunteers, rather than by randomly chosen community members?
Yes, the validity of geographic spread is limited by the fact that respondents are volunteers. Even so, I believe it will be informative to see if and how access to resources varies in the subset of people the survey reaches. If there are significant differences based on country, for example, that could inform resource distribution in a potential intervention. Of course, it would be important to follow up to confirm that the differences present in the results are representative of the larger population.
Good point, I think you could reframe it to still work: If the goal is to treat mental health issues in EA, the subset of people you could actually reach with treatment is probably fairly similar to the subset that would answer this poll: people that use the Forum.
It probably can’t deliver accurate numbers on prevalence, but it can profile the people it’s targeting on their demographics and desires.