If we look direction at the association between active outreach and levels of engagement, we see no strong relationship (aside from within the very small “No engagement with EA” category).
I agree that it’s intuitively plausible, as you say, that people who actively sought out EA might be expected to be more inclined to high engagement.
But I think that whether the person encounters EA through active outreach (influencing selection) may often be in tension with whether the person encounters EA through a high-touch form of engagement (leading to different probability of continued engagement). For example, EA Groups are quite active outreach (ex hypothesi, leading to lower selection for EA inclination), but higher touch (potentially leading to people being more likely to get engaged), whereas a book is more passive outreach (ex hypothesi, leading to higher selection for EA inclination), but lower touch (and so may be less likely to facilitate engagement)[1].
Thank you for this analysis! While insightful, I found myself a bit puzzled. Are introductory fellowships and other courses run by local EA groups considered under “educational courses” or does that mean things like philosophy classes, where EA might be mentioned as a concept?
I am not sure what the primary outreach tool of other EA groups are, but for EA Estonia it is promoting our introductory courses/fellowships. This post made me wonder which category would the course participants choose as first exposure to EA—would it be Facebook (since we promote the course there), articles/blogs/80k Hours/LessWrong (as reading these is part of the course), local EA groups (since the national group runs the course), educational courses (as mentioned above) or friends (about 1⁄3 of participants find the course via a friend recommendation)?
The lack of mention of courses—aside from specifically EA Virtual Programs—makes me wonder if other EA groups take a different approach to attracting new members. Based on my rough estimates, >80% of our members found EA through our courses or became involved because of it. I would have expected to see “a course/fellowship run by a local EA group” as an option under “Factors important for getting involved.”
Did anyone mention a course under the “Other” section? Were there any survey questions about this? If not, would you consider adding it to the next survey? As a community builder, it would be very useful to see to which degree these fellowships and other courses play a role in engaging people or whether we should consider other approaches. Alternatively, would it be possible to ask for country-specific data analysis?
Are introductory fellowships and other courses run by local EA groups considered under “educational courses” or does that mean things like philosophy classes, where EA might be mentioned as a concept?
There are two different things to consider here:
People’s response to the main question about where they heard about EA, which was a selection from a fixed list. So this just means the respondent selected “Educational course (e.g., lecture, class, MOOC)”, with no additional classification from us.
Their responses to the open comment follow-up question asking for more detail: the majority of these (>75%) refer to a university course or the Singer MOOC.
In most cases where someone joins EA through an activity run by their EA group, they’ll select EA Group. I went through references to “group” in the comments for those who did not select EA Group and most (23/36) were not referring to an EA Group, 3 referred to a friend referring them to a group, 2 referred to seeing an ad for a group, 5 mentioned something else first introducing them to EA but a group being useful for them beginning to seriously engage and the rest were miscellaneous/uncategorisable. I went through comments of those who did select EA Group and 9/111 (8%) mentioned a fellowship. You can see a more detailed analysis of comments by those who selected EA Group in 2020 here, where 7% mentioned a fellowship, but a larger number mentioned an event or fresher’s fair.
Alternatively, would it be possible to ask for country-specific data analysis?
For Estonia, there are not very clear differences (p=0.023). This is from n=37 for Estonia, so we should not be very confident about the differences.
Thanks for raising this interesting point!
If we look direction at the association between active outreach and levels of engagement, we see no strong relationship (aside from within the very small “No engagement with EA” category).
I agree that it’s intuitively plausible, as you say, that people who actively sought out EA might be expected to be more inclined to high engagement.
But I think that whether the person encounters EA through active outreach (influencing selection) may often be in tension with whether the person encounters EA through a high-touch form of engagement (leading to different probability of continued engagement). For example, EA Groups are quite active outreach (ex hypothesi, leading to lower selection for EA inclination), but higher touch (potentially leading to people being more likely to get engaged), whereas a book is more passive outreach (ex hypothesi, leading to higher selection for EA inclination), but lower touch (and so may be less likely to facilitate engagement)[1].
There may be other differences between these particular two examples of course. For example, EA Groups and EA books might select in different ways.
Thank you for this analysis! While insightful, I found myself a bit puzzled. Are introductory fellowships and other courses run by local EA groups considered under “educational courses” or does that mean things like philosophy classes, where EA might be mentioned as a concept?
I am not sure what the primary outreach tool of other EA groups are, but for EA Estonia it is promoting our introductory courses/fellowships. This post made me wonder which category would the course participants choose as first exposure to EA—would it be Facebook (since we promote the course there), articles/blogs/80k Hours/LessWrong (as reading these is part of the course), local EA groups (since the national group runs the course), educational courses (as mentioned above) or friends (about 1⁄3 of participants find the course via a friend recommendation)?
The lack of mention of courses—aside from specifically EA Virtual Programs—makes me wonder if other EA groups take a different approach to attracting new members. Based on my rough estimates, >80% of our members found EA through our courses or became involved because of it. I would have expected to see “a course/fellowship run by a local EA group” as an option under “Factors important for getting involved.”
Did anyone mention a course under the “Other” section? Were there any survey questions about this? If not, would you consider adding it to the next survey? As a community builder, it would be very useful to see to which degree these fellowships and other courses play a role in engaging people or whether we should consider other approaches. Alternatively, would it be possible to ask for country-specific data analysis?
There are two different things to consider here:
People’s response to the main question about where they heard about EA, which was a selection from a fixed list. So this just means the respondent selected “Educational course (e.g., lecture, class, MOOC)”, with no additional classification from us.
Their responses to the open comment follow-up question asking for more detail: the majority of these (>75%) refer to a university course or the Singer MOOC.
In most cases where someone joins EA through an activity run by their EA group, they’ll select EA Group. I went through references to “group” in the comments for those who did not select EA Group and most (23/36) were not referring to an EA Group, 3 referred to a friend referring them to a group, 2 referred to seeing an ad for a group, 5 mentioned something else first introducing them to EA but a group being useful for them beginning to seriously engage and the rest were miscellaneous/uncategorisable. I went through comments of those who did select EA Group and 9/111 (8%) mentioned a fellowship. You can see a more detailed analysis of comments by those who selected EA Group in 2020 here, where 7% mentioned a fellowship, but a larger number mentioned an event or fresher’s fair.
For Estonia, there are not very clear differences (p=0.023). This is from n=37 for Estonia, so we should not be very confident about the differences.