Announcing EA Pulse, large monthly US surveys on EA

Rethink Priorities is excited to announce EA Pulse—a large, monthly survey of the US population aimed at measuring and understanding public perceptions of Effective Altruism and EA-aligned cause areas! This project has been made possible by a grant from the FTX Future Fund.

What is EA Pulse?

EA Pulse aims to serve two primary purposes:

  1. Tracking changes in responses to key questions relevant to EA and longtermism over time (e.g. awareness of and attitudes towards EA and longtermism, and support for different cause areas).

  2. Running ad hoc questions requested by EA orgs (e.g. support for particular policies, responses to different messages EAs are considering).

We welcome requests for questions to include in the survey of either of these types. Please comment below or e-mail david@rethinkpriorities.org, ideally by October 20th.

By tracking beliefs and attitudes towards issues related to effective altruism and longtermism, we can better get our finger on the pulse of movement building efforts over time, and potentially identify unforeseen risks to the movement. We will also be able to determine whether particular subgroups of the population appear to be missed or turned off by our outreach efforts.

We also believe that surveying the broader public can provide a new window for looking at how the ideas generated by the EA community are being taken up by the wider population. In turn, it can help us communicate more effectively and efficiently about what matters most.

Due to space constraints this survey is best suited to asking about relatively short, straightforward questions. If you are interested in surveys with more complex designs, a larger number of questions or experimental manipulations, complex instructions, or which involve asking respondents to read lengthy text or view videos, we are potentially able to accommodate these in separate surveys (funding permitting). Please feel free to reach out to discuss possibilities.