That makes sense. Reference numbers even for things like race is surprisingly tricky. We’ve previously considered comparing the percentages for race within the EA Survey to baseline percentages. But although this works passably well for the US (EAS respondents are more white) and UK (EAS respondents are less white)- without taking into account the fact that EAS respondents are disproportionately rich, highly educated and young and therefore should not be expected to represent the composition of the general population- for many other major countries there simple isn’t national data on race/ethnicity that matches the same categories as the US/UK. I think people should generally be a lot more uncertain when estimating how far the EA community is representative in this sense. The figures still allow comparison within the EA community though.
That makes sense. Reference numbers even for things like race is surprisingly tricky. We’ve previously considered comparing the percentages for race within the EA Survey to baseline percentages. But although this works passably well for the US (EAS respondents are more white) and UK (EAS respondents are less white)- without taking into account the fact that EAS respondents are disproportionately rich, highly educated and young and therefore should not be expected to represent the composition of the general population- for many other major countries there simple isn’t national data on race/ethnicity that matches the same categories as the US/UK. I think people should generally be a lot more uncertain when estimating how far the EA community is representative in this sense. The figures still allow comparison within the EA community though.