I think this was the first time I completed it in years! Thank you for organising.
Some notes: I was confused why I was supposed to select only up to three responses for EA entities which might have positively influenced my impact, but had unlimited responses for negative influences.
I also thought it was a bit odd that I was asked to estimate my giving for 2020 but not my income.
The questions about positive/negative influences were CEA requests (although we did discuss them together): I believe the rationale is that for positive influences, they were interested in the most important influences (and wanted to set a higher bar by preventing people indicating that more than three things had the “largest” influence on them), whereas for the possible negative influences, they were interested in anything which had a negative influence, not merely the largest negative influences.
Regarding donations: historically, we have always asked about the previous year’s income and donations (because these are known quantities) and then planned donations for the year the survey is run (since people likely won’t know this for sure, but it’s still useful to know, for broader context. Now that we launch the survey right at the end of the year, the difference between past and planned donations is likely less acute. Naturally, it would be ideal if we could ask for income and donation data for both the previous year and the present year, but we constantly face pressure to include other questions, while trying to maintain survey length, so we have had to leave out a lot of things. (This also explains why we had to cut the questions we had in previous years asking about ‘individual’ and ‘household’ figures, given that many people’s earnings/donations are part of a unit).
That should work well for you this year then: this year you’ll report how much you donated in 2019 (and how much you plan to donate in 2020). Next year you’ll report how much you actually donated this year and how much you plan to donate overall next year.
The two questions were subtly different for other reasons. If I understand it correctly, the first question asks for positive influences on your impact, and the second question for negative influences on your EA involvement.
So for example, being persuaded that less involvement in EA → increasing your impact will lead you to select the same response for both.
I think this was the first time I completed it in years! Thank you for organising.
Some notes: I was confused why I was supposed to select only up to three responses for EA entities which might have positively influenced my impact, but had unlimited responses for negative influences. I also thought it was a bit odd that I was asked to estimate my giving for 2020 but not my income.
Hi Denise,
Thanks for taking the survey!
The questions about positive/negative influences were CEA requests (although we did discuss them together): I believe the rationale is that for positive influences, they were interested in the most important influences (and wanted to set a higher bar by preventing people indicating that more than three things had the “largest” influence on them), whereas for the possible negative influences, they were interested in anything which had a negative influence, not merely the largest negative influences.
Regarding donations: historically, we have always asked about the previous year’s income and donations (because these are known quantities) and then planned donations for the year the survey is run (since people likely won’t know this for sure, but it’s still useful to know, for broader context. Now that we launch the survey right at the end of the year, the difference between past and planned donations is likely less acute. Naturally, it would be ideal if we could ask for income and donation data for both the previous year and the present year, but we constantly face pressure to include other questions, while trying to maintain survey length, so we have had to leave out a lot of things. (This also explains why we had to cut the questions we had in previous years asking about ‘individual’ and ‘household’ figures, given that many people’s earnings/donations are part of a unit).
Darn, I donated a lot more in 2019 than 2020.
That should work well for you this year then: this year you’ll report how much you donated in 2019 (and how much you plan to donate in 2020). Next year you’ll report how much you actually donated this year and how much you plan to donate overall next year.
The two questions were subtly different for other reasons. If I understand it correctly, the first question asks for positive influences on your impact, and the second question for negative influences on your EA involvement.
So for example, being persuaded that less involvement in EA → increasing your impact will lead you to select the same response for both.