Thank you again for all your work on this—it’s super useful, and maybe a significant update for me. (I wish we’d done more surveying work like this years ago!)
A) I agree the attitude-behaviour gap seems like perhaps the biggest issue in interpreting the results (maybe the most proactive and able to act people are the ones who have already heard of EA, so we’ve already reached more of the audience than it seems from these results).
One way to get at that would be to define EA interest using the behavioural measures, and then check which fraction had already heard of EA.
E.g. you mention that ~2% of the sample clicked on a link to sign up to a newsletter about EA. Of those, what fraction had already heard of it?
B) Some notes that illustrate the importance of the attitude-behaviour gap:
~8.8% were highly sympathetic.
Of those, ~85% didn’t know what EA was, suggesting that we’ve only reached about 1⁄6 of the people who are sympathetic to EA.
If (guessing) ~5% of the highly sympathetic people are willing and able to take major action, that would suggest that ~0.4% of students at top 40 english-speaking unis could become highly engaged EAs in the future. That’s ~8,000 people under 30, or 400 graduates per year. (This ignores the possibility of convincing people who are currently less sympathetic.)
There’s maybe ~1000 highly engaged english-speaking EAs under 30 now who are graduates of those unis, suggesting we’ve reached 1⁄8 of the potential.
If it’s 10% who would take major action, we’ve only reached 1⁄16; while if it’s under 1% then we’ve already reached most of them.
So a key parameter is how much sympathy on this scale can be translated into action. If high, then we have a long way to go; if low, then we might have reached most already.
C) One minor thing – in future versions, it would be useful to ask about climate change as a cause to work on. I expect it would be the most popular of the options, and is therefore better for ‘meeting people where they are’ than extreme poverty.
13.6% (3 people) of the 22 students who clicked on a link to sign up to a newsletter about EA already knew what EA was.
And 6.9% of the 115 students who clicked on at least one link (e.g. EA website, link to subscribe to newsletter, 80k website) already knew what EA was.
Another potentially useful measure (to get at people’s motivation to act) could be this one:
“Some people in the Effective Altruism community have changed their career paths in order to have a career that will do the most good possible in line with the principles of Effective Altruism. Could you imagine doing the same now or in the future? Yes / No”
Of the total sample, 42.9% said yes to it. And of those people, only 10.4% already knew what EA was.
And if we only look at those who are very EA-sympathetic (scoring high on EA agreement, effectiveness-focus, expansive altruism and interest to learn more about EA), the number is 21.8%. In other words: of the most EA-sympathetic students who said they could imagine changing their career to do the most good, 21.8% (12 people) already knew what EA was.
(66.3% of the very EA-sympathetic students said they could imagine changing their career path to do the most good.)
A caveat is that some of these percentages are inferred from relatively small sample sizes — so they could be off.
Thank you again for all your work on this—it’s super useful, and maybe a significant update for me. (I wish we’d done more surveying work like this years ago!)
A) I agree the attitude-behaviour gap seems like perhaps the biggest issue in interpreting the results (maybe the most proactive and able to act people are the ones who have already heard of EA, so we’ve already reached more of the audience than it seems from these results).
One way to get at that would be to define EA interest using the behavioural measures, and then check which fraction had already heard of EA.
E.g. you mention that ~2% of the sample clicked on a link to sign up to a newsletter about EA. Of those, what fraction had already heard of it?
B) Some notes that illustrate the importance of the attitude-behaviour gap:
~8.8% were highly sympathetic.
Of those, ~85% didn’t know what EA was, suggesting that we’ve only reached about 1⁄6 of the people who are sympathetic to EA.
If (guessing) ~5% of the highly sympathetic people are willing and able to take major action, that would suggest that ~0.4% of students at top 40 english-speaking unis could become highly engaged EAs in the future. That’s ~8,000 people under 30, or 400 graduates per year. (This ignores the possibility of convincing people who are currently less sympathetic.)
There’s maybe ~1000 highly engaged english-speaking EAs under 30 now who are graduates of those unis, suggesting we’ve reached 1⁄8 of the potential.
If it’s 10% who would take major action, we’ve only reached 1⁄16; while if it’s under 1% then we’ve already reached most of them.
So a key parameter is how much sympathy on this scale can be translated into action. If high, then we have a long way to go; if low, then we might have reached most already.
C) One minor thing – in future versions, it would be useful to ask about climate change as a cause to work on. I expect it would be the most popular of the options, and is therefore better for ‘meeting people where they are’ than extreme poverty.
Thanks Ben!
13.6% (3 people) of the 22 students who clicked on a link to sign up to a newsletter about EA already knew what EA was.
And 6.9% of the 115 students who clicked on at least one link (e.g. EA website, link to subscribe to newsletter, 80k website) already knew what EA was.
Another potentially useful measure (to get at people’s motivation to act) could be this one:
“Some people in the Effective Altruism community have changed their career paths in order to have a career that will do the most good possible in line with the principles of Effective Altruism. Could you imagine doing the same now or in the future? Yes / No”
Of the total sample, 42.9% said yes to it. And of those people, only 10.4% already knew what EA was.
And if we only look at those who are very EA-sympathetic (scoring high on EA agreement, effectiveness-focus, expansive altruism and interest to learn more about EA), the number is 21.8%. In other words: of the most EA-sympathetic students who said they could imagine changing their career to do the most good, 21.8% (12 people) already knew what EA was.
(66.3% of the very EA-sympathetic students said they could imagine changing their career path to do the most good.)
A caveat is that some of these percentages are inferred from relatively small sample sizes — so they could be off.