This seems very plausible to me. Personal connections repeatedly appear to be among the most important factors for promoting people’s continued involvement in and increased engagement with EA (e.g. 2019, 2020).
That said very few EAs appear to have any significant number of EAs who they would “feel comfortable reaching out to to ask for a favor” (an imperfect proxy for “friend” of course).
Anecdotally, EAs I speak to are usually surprised by how low these numbers are. (These are usually highly engaged EAs with lots of connections, who therefore likely have a very unusual experience of the EA community).
And yet these numbers are themselves almost certainly a large over-estimate of the total community, since respondents are themselves more likely to be highly engaged, and have more connections. So fewer people from groups with less connections are in the survey and plausibly those who are in the survey are disproportionately likely to have personal connections.
Among our respondents, >60% of the most highly engaged EAs (e.g. EA org staff and local group leaders) have >10 connections, and >70% have 5 or more. Conversely, a majority of the least engaged half of respondents (levels 1-3) have <2 connections, with 0 being the modal response.
Of course, these responses are from 2019, so it is quite possible that the situation has changed since then.
It’s really nice to have this data, especially in this convenient format, thank you kindly for your work to make it possible and use it in well fit circumstances like this one
This seems very plausible to me. Personal connections repeatedly appear to be among the most important factors for promoting people’s continued involvement in and increased engagement with EA (e.g. 2019, 2020).
That said very few EAs appear to have any significant number of EAs who they would “feel comfortable reaching out to to ask for a favor” (an imperfect proxy for “friend” of course).
Anecdotally, EAs I speak to are usually surprised by how low these numbers are. (These are usually highly engaged EAs with lots of connections, who therefore likely have a very unusual experience of the EA community).
And yet these numbers are themselves almost certainly a large over-estimate of the total community, since respondents are themselves more likely to be highly engaged, and have more connections. So fewer people from groups with less connections are in the survey and plausibly those who are in the survey are disproportionately likely to have personal connections.
Among our respondents, >60% of the most highly engaged EAs (e.g. EA org staff and local group leaders) have >10 connections, and >70% have 5 or more. Conversely, a majority of the least engaged half of respondents (levels 1-3) have <2 connections, with 0 being the modal response.
Of course, these responses are from 2019, so it is quite possible that the situation has changed since then.
It’s really nice to have this data, especially in this convenient format, thank you kindly for your work to make it possible and use it in well fit circumstances like this one