In addition to my other comment, I would add that there are two different things to distinguish:
‘More engaged people are more likely to say that EAG helped them get involved, because more engaged people are more likely to have attended EAG.’ [As I understand it, this is not your claim.]
I think this is broadly true.
But the results are still not circular, since you can engage with a factor, but not think it important for getting involved. As I noted in my other comment, many more highly engaged people have engaged with an EA book than an EA Group, but EA Groups trounce books in terms of importance for getting highly engaged EAs involved.
‘More engaged people are more likely to say that EAG helped them get involved, because the wording of the engagement scale includes attending EAG among the examples of Considerable engagement...’
I think this is very unlikely to be true.
The crux seems to me to be: if we were to change the wording of the engagement scale so that EAG/EA Groups (or all the concrete examples) were removed from the items, would this change these results.
I would predict that this would neither significantly change the pattern of low/high engagement respondents who have attended EAG/an EA Group, nor change the results in terms of what factors are important for getting involved in EA.
As noted in my other comment, I think there are a number of reasons to think this, not least, that attending an EA Group is not even mentioned among the high engagement categories in the wording of the question.
In addition to my other comment, I would add that there are two different things to distinguish:
‘More engaged people are more likely to say that EAG helped them get involved, because more engaged people are more likely to have attended EAG.’ [As I understand it, this is not your claim.]
I think this is broadly true.
But the results are still not circular, since you can engage with a factor, but not think it important for getting involved. As I noted in my other comment, many more highly engaged people have engaged with an EA book than an EA Group, but EA Groups trounce books in terms of importance for getting highly engaged EAs involved.
‘More engaged people are more likely to say that EAG helped them get involved, because the wording of the engagement scale includes attending EAG among the examples of Considerable engagement...’
I think this is very unlikely to be true.
The crux seems to me to be: if we were to change the wording of the engagement scale so that EAG/EA Groups (or all the concrete examples) were removed from the items, would this change these results.
I would predict that this would neither significantly change the pattern of low/high engagement respondents who have attended EAG/an EA Group, nor change the results in terms of what factors are important for getting involved in EA.
As noted in my other comment, I think there are a number of reasons to think this, not least, that attending an EA Group is not even mentioned among the high engagement categories in the wording of the question.