Now that the book review contest is winding down, I want to start another big project: the ACX Reader Research Survey.
I used to do regular December surveys with questions I was interested in. Some people would ask me to include questions for their own research projects. I always declined, because if I said yes to everyone it would take a whole new survey to fit all the questions on. Eventually I realized I should actually just do the whole new survey, so this is that.
This blog has a lot of readers in in specific demographics, like:
- the tech industry
- science
- involved in meditation/drugs/biohacking
- with unusual genders/sexualities
- with psychiatric issues
…so this would be a good way to learn about those demographics. The main inspiration for this project was that meditation researcher Daniel Ingram asked if he could piggyback on my yearly survey to ask people about their meditation experiences, and although I was excited about this I shut SSC down before we got a chance to make this happen. This is for him and everyone else with similar needs.
If you're a researcher (professional or amateur) who wants to ask questions to the ACX readership, please send me an email at scott@slatestarcodex.com, by July 10, with:
- a description of who you are and what project you’re interested in
- a description of whether you want to aim your survey at any particular demographic
- a link to an un-password-protected Google Form that has your questions on it. Recommended < 25 questions per project, but if you have a really exciting project that absolutely needs more questions, talk to me about it. I’m not sure yet whether I will end up linking to your Google Form directly or adding your questions to a centralized Form, but have your Form prepared so that if I do link to it, it does what you want it to do. Start with a question asking for User ID (description below)
Sending an email doesn’t guarantee inclusion in the survey. I may not include projects that seem unprofessional or boring, and I might triage projects if I get too many of them and become overwhelmed.
Sometime July 10 - July 15 I should come up with some way to tell people whether they’re included or not and confirm that I received all appropriate emails, and then sometime around July 15 I'll post the survey.
I’m still trying to figure out exactly how I’m going to structure this. One likely way is that I start with a Google Form that assigns everyone a User ID and asks basic questions like age, sex, country, race, and education level. Then I’ll ask people to fill out X randomly selected Google Form surveys from the ones people have sent me, and include their User ID on each (where X depends on how long each form is and how much time they have). At the end of the survey, I’ll share the form with the User IDs with all researchers. The survey will end sometime before August 1 and I’ll share the User IDs with researchers around then.
I’m also willing to have nonrandom surveys aimed at particular demographics, for example people who struggle with depression. If you have a survey for a particular demographic only, let me know and I’ll figure out how to fit you in.
If researchers discover something interesting, they can send it to me. I might write up some of the things people find (not all of them) into blog posts, and if any of this leads to papers I’d be interested in reading them and linking to them.
I'll be reading the comments here so I can answer any questions.
ACX Reader Research Survey: Call For Submissions