That doesn’t seem to apply so well as an explanation of the dropoff that GWWC found of a fairly similar magnitude. It seems less likely that people would find it too onerous to answer GWWC’s (if I recall, fairly simple) request for confirmation that they are still meeting a formal pledge they took.
32.4% of the 2018 EA Survey respondents had taken the pledge (see our post). As of 2018 it looks like GWWC had around just over 3000 members, which suggests we captured around 25-30% of the total membership (presumably a subset that is on average more engaged in EA). My impression is that many GWWC members were not particularly engaged with (and perhaps do not even identify with) effective altruism at all, so it’s no surprise that the total number of Pledge takers within our sample of EAs is smaller than the total population of Pledge takers.
I’m not sure what the implication of suggesting that these are different populations is though? My observation was that the possibility that people simply “stop taking the EA census” doesn’t seem to serve so well as an explanation of the dropoff that GWWC observe. Of course, it’s possible that people are dropping out of the GWWC Pledge (or at least contact with GWWC checking in on their Pledge) for unrelated reasons to people disappearing from the EA Survey, though it seems likely that there is some overlap given the relationship between GWWC and EA, but it remains the case that people simply ceasing to complete the EA Survey can’t explain away GWWC’s similar rate of dropoff and so it remains a possible concern.
That doesn’t seem to apply so well as an explanation of the dropoff that GWWC found of a fairly similar magnitude. It seems less likely that people would find it too onerous to answer GWWC’s (if I recall, fairly simple) request for confirmation that they are still meeting a formal pledge they took.
To what extent are these the same populations? How many people who took the census also took the pledge?
32.4% of the 2018 EA Survey respondents had taken the pledge (see our post). As of 2018 it looks like GWWC had around just over 3000 members, which suggests we captured around 25-30% of the total membership (presumably a subset that is on average more engaged in EA). My impression is that many GWWC members were not particularly engaged with (and perhaps do not even identify with) effective altruism at all, so it’s no surprise that the total number of Pledge takers within our sample of EAs is smaller than the total population of Pledge takers.
I’m not sure what the implication of suggesting that these are different populations is though? My observation was that the possibility that people simply “stop taking the EA census” doesn’t seem to serve so well as an explanation of the dropoff that GWWC observe. Of course, it’s possible that people are dropping out of the GWWC Pledge (or at least contact with GWWC checking in on their Pledge) for unrelated reasons to people disappearing from the EA Survey, though it seems likely that there is some overlap given the relationship between GWWC and EA, but it remains the case that people simply ceasing to complete the EA Survey can’t explain away GWWC’s similar rate of dropoff and so it remains a possible concern.