That’s an interesting move. I’m looking forward to hearing more reports on successes and failures of different formats of giving games now that TLYCS is focusing on them so much.
How did you solve the problem of the information dissemination? In our case we had DMI compete with IPA, and the discussion became very moderation heavy because those of us who had read all the material on the charities, the organizers, had to dispense facts for most of the time, which left some but not much time for discussion. (DMI won, even though it was after the latest GiveWell update.)
Quick update on where things stand w/ our ability to analyze the relative efficacy of different sorts of Giving Games…
I’m working on a spreadsheet that will basically take all the data we collect about each game and put it into a pivot table. Then users will be able to look at whatever cuts of data they want: all data for games involving AMF, all data for games including a local option, games w/ 2 charities vs. games with 3, games in US vs. games in UK, etc. I just completed a very preliminary prototype, but there’s still a bunch of work to do to get it operating smoothly and back populate some of our old data. Eventually I’d like to make this a shared resource that GG facilitators and researchers can access.
Hi Jon Behar: I read that there might be an academic paper looking at the impact of giving games in the works, could you confirm this? Would be interested in reading if so.
We’ve run a lab experiment where we tested the effects of giving people money to donate to their choice of two charities featured in a TED talk all subjects watched. It’s described here, my collaborator is working on writing it up for publication. Takeaway is that the “Giving Game Treatment” saw huge (2-4x) increases in amount of their own money people donated, % of people who signed up for at least one charity newsletter, and total # of subscriptions relative to the control group.
Next thing we want to test is whether we can create lasting changes in attitudes and behaviors. Not sure yet whether that will be a formal (intended for academic publication) study or not.
Btw, while not directly related to the efficacy of Giving Games, there are also a couple of academic studies likely to be published that have used the Giving Game model to test hypotheses by varying the information provided to different treatments. Some U Chicago researchers did this to extend their research on the “other minds problem” and I’m working with someone at U of Hamburg to expand the literature on how “social information” affects giving.
On the meta-issue, I agree, it will be interesting to see different results. Charity Science recently ran a skeptic-oriented Giving Game, they will write it up soon.
For the information dissemination, we started with a brief presentation on the two charities, for AMF using TLYCS’ materials and for the local charity based on research done by a couple of members. That way, everyone had about the same amount of material, and we didn’t focus too much time on the details. We instead focused on the higher-level reasons for giving and priorities—things such as “do you give locally but less impactfully” vs. “do you give globally but more impactfully.” That worked out well for us, and really got the participants well engaged with emotion-laden topics.
That’s an interesting move. I’m looking forward to hearing more reports on successes and failures of different formats of giving games now that TLYCS is focusing on them so much.
How did you solve the problem of the information dissemination? In our case we had DMI compete with IPA, and the discussion became very moderation heavy because those of us who had read all the material on the charities, the organizers, had to dispense facts for most of the time, which left some but not much time for discussion. (DMI won, even though it was after the latest GiveWell update.)
Quick update on where things stand w/ our ability to analyze the relative efficacy of different sorts of Giving Games…
I’m working on a spreadsheet that will basically take all the data we collect about each game and put it into a pivot table. Then users will be able to look at whatever cuts of data they want: all data for games involving AMF, all data for games including a local option, games w/ 2 charities vs. games with 3, games in US vs. games in UK, etc. I just completed a very preliminary prototype, but there’s still a bunch of work to do to get it operating smoothly and back populate some of our old data. Eventually I’d like to make this a shared resource that GG facilitators and researchers can access.
Awesome! I’m looking forward to reading/faceting that.
Hi Jon Behar: I read that there might be an academic paper looking at the impact of giving games in the works, could you confirm this? Would be interested in reading if so.
We’ve run a lab experiment where we tested the effects of giving people money to donate to their choice of two charities featured in a TED talk all subjects watched. It’s described here, my collaborator is working on writing it up for publication. Takeaway is that the “Giving Game Treatment” saw huge (2-4x) increases in amount of their own money people donated, % of people who signed up for at least one charity newsletter, and total # of subscriptions relative to the control group.
Next thing we want to test is whether we can create lasting changes in attitudes and behaviors. Not sure yet whether that will be a formal (intended for academic publication) study or not.
Btw, while not directly related to the efficacy of Giving Games, there are also a couple of academic studies likely to be published that have used the Giving Game model to test hypotheses by varying the information provided to different treatments. Some U Chicago researchers did this to extend their research on the “other minds problem” and I’m working with someone at U of Hamburg to expand the literature on how “social information” affects giving.
On the meta-issue, I agree, it will be interesting to see different results. Charity Science recently ran a skeptic-oriented Giving Game, they will write it up soon.
For the information dissemination, we started with a brief presentation on the two charities, for AMF using TLYCS’ materials and for the local charity based on research done by a couple of members. That way, everyone had about the same amount of material, and we didn’t focus too much time on the details. We instead focused on the higher-level reasons for giving and priorities—things such as “do you give locally but less impactfully” vs. “do you give globally but more impactfully.” That worked out well for us, and really got the participants well engaged with emotion-laden topics.