Thanks for this post. One dataset not included in this analysis though is the number of EA groups. CEA’s 2019 local EA group organizers survey data shows that EA has grown in terms of number of active groups significantly since 2015, but the number of new groups founded per year was pretty stagnant from 2015 to 2018. The screenshots below are taken from the survey report.
However, according to CEA’s 2020 annual review, they tracked 250 active groups via the EA Groups survey, compared to 176 at the end of 2019. So I think EA, in terms of number of active groups, has actually grown a lot in 2020 compared to 2015-2019.
It would be great if CEA released a writeup on the data from the EA Groups 2020 Survey so we can have updated numbers for the two figures above.
Just to clarify, the EA Groups Survey is a joint project of Rethink Priorities and CEA (with all analysis done by Rethink Priorities). The post you link to is written by Rethink Priorities staff member Neil Dullaghan.
The writeup for the 2020 survey should be out within a month.
according to CEA’s 2020 annual review, they tracked 250 active groups via the EA Groups survey, compared to 176 at the end of 2019. So I think EA, in terms of number of active groups, has actually grown a lot in 2020 compared to 2015-2019.
This isn’t a safe inference, since it’s just comparing the size of the survey sample, and not necessarily the number of groups. That said, we do observe a similar pattern of growth in 2020 as in 2019.
Ah yes, thanks for clarifying and sorry for the omission! Looking forward to that writeup. Will there be an estimate of the number of groups including outside of the survey sample for that writeup David?
An “estimate of the number of groups including outside of the survey sample” wouldn’t quite make sense here, because I think we have good grounds to think that we (including CEA) know of the overwhelming majority of groups that exist(ed in 2020) and know that we captured >90% of the groups that exist.
For earlier years it’s a bit more speculative, what we can do there is something like what I mentioned in my reply to habryka comparing numbers across cohorts across year to get a sense of whether numbers actually seem to be growing or whether people from the 2019 survey are just dropping out.
Thse graphs are surprising to me. They seem to assume that no groups were dying in these years? I mean, that’s plausible since they are all pretty young, but it does seem pretty normal for groups to die a few years after being founded.
I think the first graph only counts the number of active local groups. It is true and pretty normal that some groups become inactive after a few years of being founded. And I think the second graph only covers active groups by the year they were founded, but I could be wrong.
It’s a bit hard to eye-ball, but it seems that the blue line is just the integral of the red line? Which means that the blue line doesn’t account for any groups that closed down.
Yeh these graphs are purely based on groups who were still active and took the survey in 2019, so they won’t include groups that existed in years pre-2019 and then stopped existing before 2019. We’ve changed the title of the graph to make this clearer.
That said, when we compare the pattern of growth across cohorts across surveys for the LGS, we see very similar patterns across years with closely overlapping lines. This is in contrast to the EA Surveys where we see consistently lower numbers within previous cohort across successive surveys, in line with attrition. This still wouldn’t capture groups which come into existence and then almost immediately go out of existence before they have chance to take a survey. But I think it suggests the pattern of strong growth up to and including 2015 and then plateau (of growth, not of numbers) is right.
One other thing to bear in mind about growth in groups is that, as I discussed in my reply to Aaron, this metric may be measuring the fruits of earlier growth more than current growth in the movement. My impression that many groups are founded by people who are not themselves new to EA, so if you get people into the movement in year X, you would expect to see groups being founded some years after they join. This lag may give the false reassurance than the movement is still growing when really it’s just coasting on past successes.
Thanks for this post. One dataset not included in this analysis though is the number of EA groups. CEA’s 2019 local EA group organizers survey data shows that EA has grown in terms of number of active groups significantly since 2015, but the number of new groups founded per year was pretty stagnant from 2015 to 2018. The screenshots below are taken from the survey report.
However, according to CEA’s 2020 annual review, they tracked 250 active groups via the EA Groups survey, compared to 176 at the end of 2019. So I think EA, in terms of number of active groups, has actually grown a lot in 2020 compared to 2015-2019.
It would be great if CEA released a writeup on the data from the EA Groups 2020 Survey so we can have updated numbers for the two figures above.
Just to clarify, the EA Groups Survey is a joint project of Rethink Priorities and CEA (with all analysis done by Rethink Priorities). The post you link to is written by Rethink Priorities staff member Neil Dullaghan.
The writeup for the 2020 survey should be out within a month.
This isn’t a safe inference, since it’s just comparing the size of the survey sample, and not necessarily the number of groups. That said, we do observe a similar pattern of growth in 2020 as in 2019.
Ah yes, thanks for clarifying and sorry for the omission! Looking forward to that writeup. Will there be an estimate of the number of groups including outside of the survey sample for that writeup David?
An “estimate of the number of groups including outside of the survey sample” wouldn’t quite make sense here, because I think we have good grounds to think that we (including CEA) know of the overwhelming majority of groups that exist(ed in 2020) and know that we captured >90% of the groups that exist.
For earlier years it’s a bit more speculative, what we can do there is something like what I mentioned in my reply to habryka comparing numbers across cohorts across year to get a sense of whether numbers actually seem to be growing or whether people from the 2019 survey are just dropping out.
Thse graphs are surprising to me. They seem to assume that no groups were dying in these years? I mean, that’s plausible since they are all pretty young, but it does seem pretty normal for groups to die a few years after being founded.
I think the first graph only counts the number of active local groups. It is true and pretty normal that some groups become inactive after a few years of being founded. And I think the second graph only covers active groups by the year they were founded, but I could be wrong.
It’s a bit hard to eye-ball, but it seems that the blue line is just the integral of the red line? Which means that the blue line doesn’t account for any groups that closed down.
Yeh these graphs are purely based on groups who were still active and took the survey in 2019, so they won’t include groups that existed in years pre-2019 and then stopped existing before 2019. We’ve changed the title of the graph to make this clearer.
That said, when we compare the pattern of growth across cohorts across surveys for the LGS, we see very similar patterns across years with closely overlapping lines. This is in contrast to the EA Surveys where we see consistently lower numbers within previous cohort across successive surveys, in line with attrition. This still wouldn’t capture groups which come into existence and then almost immediately go out of existence before they have chance to take a survey. But I think it suggests the pattern of strong growth up to and including 2015 and then plateau (of growth, not of numbers) is right.
Ah, great, that makes sense. Thank you for the clarification!
One other thing to bear in mind about growth in groups is that, as I discussed in my reply to Aaron, this metric may be measuring the fruits of earlier growth more than current growth in the movement. My impression that many groups are founded by people who are not themselves new to EA, so if you get people into the movement in year X, you would expect to see groups being founded some years after they join. This lag may give the false reassurance than the movement is still growing when really it’s just coasting on past successes.