If your link / draft is meant to be accessible to those *not* running surveys, I don't think it's working. I get "DON'T TAKE THIS YET! THIS IS JUST AN EXAMPLE! This survey is no longer accepting responses."
is a little confusing, I initially read "academic, computer science" as giving two alternatives (either or), and then was confused when I saw "programming" in the next bullet. it might be clearer to just remove the comma.
Also, AI is no longer a purely academic discipline (in Computer Vision, it's pretty much "just another tool" by now), so the "other academic" is a bit confusing. I'm working with AI a lot, but I'm not doing any cutting-edge research (making some minor improvements as I go along, but any good programmer does that).
i will, at least! I'm just going to make a text file called "ACX_SurveyID.txt" or something, it's no hassle. But yeah, I agree that a lot of people will lose their IDs. IDK what else Scott could do here ("please enter your email" or whatever would compromise anonymity).
You could give people a hash algorithm to apply to their email, and ask them to apply the same one on subsequent surveys. "Google md5 online; paste in your email address; use the result for your id"
That doesn't provide anonymity unless a cryptographically sufficient random salt is used. See the page "Does Hashing Make Data Anonymous" by Ed Felten.
Good point, but might it still be enough for people with only moderate privacy concerns? Felten points out that hashing a billion SSNs could be done quickly; I haven't run the numbers but I presume that iterating through all possible email addresses (up to some reasonable length) would be much less feasible.
(Which isn't enough if you're worried about attackers who already know your email address, but might be sufficiently better than nothing for most people.)
Of course if you're asking for user-inputted IDs rather than assigning them automatically, you could just let people use a memorable sequence or phrase of their choice. I guess a fair portion will prove to be less memorable than intended though.
Maybe ask them to remember something that they can easily remember, and then put it on a third-party website that would derive a salted hash? It's a bit better but not by much.
Once we get the proper surveys up and running, I will keep my User ID but I agree, people are going to forget or misplace a random alphanumeric string. I suppose this will help sort out the committed to answering everything from the shy Tories?
Most of my passwords are 16-digit random strings, including a couple subscriptions I've cancelled. So instead of forgetting a random strings, I'm going to use either my old Hulu or Disney+ password.
Actually, I'll probably forget which one I picked and end up using both in an inconsistent pattern. But it's a different kind of failure than everyone else, so that makes me special
* For the psychological conditions, there're a few where I want to answer both "Yes, I have a relative with a diagnosis of this" and "Yes, I think I have this but haven't been formally diagnosed." Please let me select both options or provide some guidance for which I should pick.
* "Age" currently accepts negative and decimal answers. Not sure if you want to bother fixing this, though.
* I'm surprised Poland and Finland make it to the ten most popular countries - is there a particular reason?
* You can probably get "State" to be a dropdown if you want to bother. But if you do, please remember to include the District of Columbia. (And maybe Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and American Samoa if you really want to be comprehensive.)
* Thank you for disambiguating the direction of transgender options.
Good point. I have the opposite problem, I filled out some medical record indicating I'm a student (which is true) but I'm older, so some enterprising professional changed it to Retired without asking. When an MA was running down the list of questions at a subsequent appointment they said, "And you're retired?" and I was so surprised I just nodded and let it stand. Next time I see them I have to get them to fix it.
Should the libertarian option on your generic demographic survey read "minimal/no redistribution of wealth" rather than "minimal/no distribution of wealth"?
The profits have already been distributed—away from the people who drilled for oil and away from the people who paid for oil and towards a third group of people did nothing and deserve the same.
Sorry for the snark. It's just that being profitable doesn't mean a business is successful.
If a business is modestly profitable most of the time, that indicates a company provides something valuable and consumers pay a price that pays for the materials and employees who create that value--plus a little extra for expansion or in case next quarter is down. That's a successful company!
If a business is significantly profitable, that indicates that an opportunity exists for a competitor to offer consumers a lower price.
If an enterprise is massively profitable in all market conditions, that might indicate a situation where competition is ineffective and a utility model might function better than a market, or it could simply indicate a traditional advertising model, and a company that will be massively profitable for decades, then massive contract overnight! (Long ago: radio; recent past: newspapers; now: movies; near future: probably network TV, but we'll see; far future, but I hope to live to see it: social media.) Or maybe a new form of economic activity is emerging, and only a John Forbes Nash level genius can explain it. Or it could even indicate a situation where something other than economics is going on, and only a George Lucas level genius can explain it*.
Finally if a business is significantly profitable for an extended time, that indicates that something is preventing competition, which forces consumers to over pay. There are natural barriers, of course, and a whole host of government-created barriers, and consumers can be lazy, but mostly this is fraud. (The business model of a big chunk of the financial services industry, including most hedge funds, is to find way to avoid or reduce competition in order to raise prices—deliberately undermining the marker itself!) Bottom line is, there are only three options when competition stops keeping a business honest, each worse than the last 1) eliminate barriers until competitors emerge (difficult, but eventually status quo ante) 2) replace competition with some form of political accountability (certain to be less efficient and less stable, but better than) 3) pray the inevitable collapse destroys the employees, pensioners, customers and stockholders of the company without causing a recession or civil war.
Basically, to summarize, if a business makes sane profit, that means it's successful. If it makes literally crazy profit, it's either a fascinating, exciting mystery or a reasonable place to advertise soap. If a business makes figuratively crazy profit, it must me stopped before it's too late.
*I'm referring of course to "American Graffiti," not that hack sci-fi he made after selling out.
Scott, your definition for "alt-right" in the draft survey would encompass 90 million members of the Sino-Leninist CCP, given current PRC national policies and ambitions!
I mean, obviously CPC orthodoxy isn't "alternative" in a country they run, but given that the PRC's governance, society and economy are a near-perfect match to fascism (their claim to socialism has been a lie since Deng Xiaoping), I don't see the especial problem with putting its supporters into that category.
I agree, mostly. Fascism and Nazism are variants of the broader socialist spectrum, and part of the far-left continuum. The only thing "right wing" about those ideologies is that they are to the right of Communism, in tolerating private ownership of some of the means of production (as long as it obeys the edicts of the State) and approximately in the same ideological space as China is now. The ideological closeness of the main tenets of all these leftist camps, including also environmentalism, is the reason why they are so hard to distinguish in many of their campaigns and programs of action. It’s why it was so easy for Communist China to morph to Fascist China in a few short years – all the basic State authoritarian/oppression/control foundations are the same, it’s a matter of denationalizing or nationalizing key industries.
I sent a survey in last Friday (7/9) on motivations during the pandemic. It was very hastily done and if it is not up to par for inclusion that is fine with me. However, I am curious about what the results would be, so if you didn't get it, should I post a link here?
Don't mind me, just stress-testing your survey form. Good form allowing negative responses in number fields; will make it easier for you to calculate the lizardman's constant.
On the depression question it might make sense to distinguish between people who are currently depressed and people who have been depressed. (Assuming thats not part of the definition of clinical depression in which case it would probably be good to explain what exactly clinical depression is)
Seconding this, it would be good for questions on pathologies to have a "I had a formal diagnosis for this condition but do not think it applies anymore" (or fold it into the first option, "I have or had a formal diagnosis").
Let the nitpicking begin! On the sexual orientation question, I'm never sure which option to pick - is asexuality an orientation as distinct from a subset within primary attraction? And I do see it tending to be lumped in under "queer" which is not what I identify with or as at all. If we're sticking with "gay, straight, bi or other", just be aware some of the "other" may be "cis het but not actively so"?
The politics is difficult, as well: I'm not a UK Conservative but I can't identify "like the Democratic Party - socially liberal multiculturalism".
I think asexuality should be listed separately, since it's distinct from gay, bi, and straight — an (aromantic, at least) asexual person would generally be incorrect in labeling themself as gay, bi, or straight.
Mmm, thing is, I find men (certain men, anyway) aesthetically attractive and appealing in a different way to how I find women. I can think about a woman "oh yes, she's pretty/beautiful" and that's it. With (certain) men it can be "Ooh my", but that's as far as it goes, I'm certainly not interested in anything more than that 😀
So if I had to put a description on it all, I'd say "cis, heterosexual, aromantic (very definitely, never had anything approaching 'falling in love' or any such feelings), asexual (but with "ooh my" about men)" which seems like a lot. I'm happy enough to be lumped in with the hets (a few years back, had some full and frank exchange of views on Tumblr with the "aces stop stinking up queer spaces, these are meant for LGBT+ people only" which was as much fighting on the topic as I cared to do).
So I'm not completely comfortable picking "other" and while I'm happy enough with "straight", as I said, it's "straight but theoretically, not one iota interested in practical application".
I guess that is a bit more complicated then... I'm not sure exactly how to represent that in survey options.
Interestingly, though, if I were to fit your description, I would probably identify much more toward the aromantic-asexual side, and not be happy about being "lumped in with the hets", because in my view classifying as "heterosexual" would pose a risk of being mistaken for someone who *is* interested in the "practical application". That's probably a cultural thing, and I'm not trying to attack your self-description or something.
I think basically it's because I am much older than the general run of online people talking about these kind of distinctions, and I only really discovered the entire concept of asexuality and aromanticism relatively recently.
So I'm more accustomed to describing myself as "well, I'm definitely not interested in women Like That and I kinda like guys, so I'm straight? I guess?" and when there was some comment about "yay, us aces are all part of the LGBTQIA+ umbrella!" I was "are we? well, if that's what you want to be under, then good for you, but I'm not part of the party" (the online fights I had were in response to some really shitty alleged 'ally' or 'we're True Queers' commentary, where it didn't gore my ox if those types didn't want me in the club, but the baby aces/aros who were really upset at the accusations got me putting my dukes up).
So yeah, I honestly don't care if I'm heteronormative or not, but younger persons who knew about this earlier and for longer may well feel that "other" suits them better. I agree with you that the *implication* there is that straight or gay or bi comes with "and you want to practice that", whereas there can be straight or gay or bi and also ace or aro or ace/aro.
Yeah, I am probably younger and more familiar with the online culture around this than you are, and I am noticeably but not horrendously bothered by the exclusionists, while I am bemused by those like you but am not going to barge in and argue with you about your own labels.
To me, the LGBTQIA+ umbrella includes everyone who isn't cisgender *and* heteroromantic *and* heterosexual, because it seems to me that society is clearly too obsessed with romance/sex for a{sexuality|romanticism} to be the norm. However, there are some competing access needs around the whole umbrella, because some people emphasizing their attraction and others emphasizing their lack of attraction can sometimes conflict in terms of what some members of each group are looking for (e.g., Alice Aroace joins a group looking for a refuge from people constantly talking about romance, and then is met by Bob Bisexual talking about his crushes, or something like that).
I will admit that ACX is the last place I expected to end up in a discussion about the dynamics of the aro/ace relationship to the rest of the LGBTQI+ community.
"straight but theoretically, not one iota interested in practical application".
I have known so many cis women in this category. Enough that I think "queer" as in "unusual" makes no sense. While "spinster" may be accurate in certain cases, the age connotations make it less than ideal.
Not sure if it's possible on whatever platform he's using, but perhaps A modifier option would help? "Round to" [orientation], or [orientation] "but disinterested." Would also be useful for those of us in long-term stable situations that don't necessarily match our whole orientation (for example, a bi person in a long-term gay relationship).
I'm of the age to be well into "spinster" territory, indeed into "maiden aunt" territory like Bertie Wooster's terrifying aunts or Betsy Trotwood in "David Copperfield" 😁
There is a difference between "would like but am very picky, have had relationships before" and "can appreciate 🔥HOT GUIZE🔥 but not one bit interested in anything but Looking Respectfully".
Suppose we can't. I think Marxism/communism could stand to be parcelled out a little more, too - on the authoritarian vs anarchist or perhaps socially progressive vs 'dirtbag left' spectrum. I can understand how quickly all that could get out of hand, though.
Well, I mean, this is my politics, or rather the forebear of the party I was reared up in (which the modern incarnation of is somewhat different): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbgPpG8pO8U
If we shall continue to insist on playing politics-politics this is the kind of erudite rhetorics I'd like to hear rather than the mealy-mouthed media-trained nonsense we're fed today! Bravo, Eamon, sock it to him!
I noticed the absence of a distinct/specific anarchist option as well. Seems weird to put authoritarian communists and anarcho-communists in the same bucket, although I suppose either way they're still a very small portion of ACX's readership.
I feel like "high taxes, traditional values" is missing as a political alignment. It doesn't really fit *me*, but it's not an inconsistent position or anything, and the existing categories don't really cover it.
"Within two generations" seems somewhat ambiguous. Are first cousins counted? Great-aunts/great-uncles?
"Drug addiction" should probably also exclude caffeine (technically all the methylxanthines, but I imagine anyone who knows that cocoa and tea have slightly-different alkaloids knows that they behave substantially as caffeine).
For Gender, which currently has five options (CM, CF, TM, TF, Other) - I would appreciate the option of "Non-Binary" (or "Transgender Non-Binary"), which seem to be about 30% of transgender people.
Sexual Orientation and Relationship Status could include "Asexual" and "Aromantic".
Work Status seems like it should allow multiple answers. A person can be both self-employed and work for profit, or both a student and a non-profit volunteer.
Profession seems to have high resolution for sciences but very low resolution for anything else. Maybe you should just include the top 20 most common professions in the world / in the US.
Under Length of Time, "How long have you been reading SSC?" - maybe mention ACX since it's the new website's name?
In Political Interest, I think this scale should be 1...10 just like the previous one, instead of 1..5.
In Depression, Anxiety, OCD, etc.... there are currently four options (diagnosed, undiagnosed, in family, neither of the above). I think this should be split into two questions each - one for yourself (diagnosed, undiagnosed, previously afflicted, none) and one for your family (in extended family, not in extended family (not including yourself)).
To add on to your last point, this could also be accomplished by just making the answers checkboxes instead of radio buttons, so you could select any combination of the answers (e.g. in family and undiagnosed, or not in family and diagnosed, etc...) without adding additional questions.
> Profession seems to have high resolution for sciences but very low resolution for anything else. Maybe you should just include the top 20 most common professions in the world / in the US.
Suspicion: this is caused based on the demographics of the readership. If the population at-large is used, we're going to end up with about 75% of the readership in one of the "normal" buckets and not enough people in the rest of the buckets to extract any useful data.
If this was a survey of professional baseball players, it would make sense to ask about which field position they play. But in this survey I doubt that we'd have enough professional athletes to even be able to get a useful signal out of a bucket like that.
Agree with almost all the stuff in this comment, although other people have good points about the granularity of scientific professions being useful.
However, if the survey doesn't split up romantic v. sexual orientation, it doesn't really make sense to include aromanticism but not the other ones in the set, and I'm a bit bemused at the proposal that asexuality and/or aromanticism could be classified under "relationship status". However, I think "single and interested in dating" v. "single and not interested in dating" could be disambiguated, because that might be confusing.
I suppose the easiest thing is just to leave a text box under "Other" for respondents to fill in about are they ace/aro/this, that or the other, rather than trying to include 99 varieties and combinations for a selection.
Puzzling over in my head if you couldn't just do a list of genders (and then other) and put 2 checkboxes for each asking if you are romantically or sexually interesting in people with this identity. Solves for many many situations at once.
I think Scott said elsewhere that he doesn't like checkboxes on Google Forms because they make analysis harder... were it not for that, I think your solution would be pretty reasonable (as long as there's an option for "none"), except that people tend to define attraction in terms of the relation of the two people's genders (which doesn't make sense in my view).
I periodic request I make: ask the user *when they are at the end of the survey* if they want their information publicly available or not.
I recall the survey asking at the front, people filling it out, and forgetting while leaving personally identifiable information somewhere along the way, and people would email to try to undo their entry.
At the beginning, mention that you'll ask at the end, and to consider that while they answer. Then, at the end, ask them to give their final answer.
--For age, you might want to ask "what is the year of your birth" and force it to accept a year (I think you can do that, if not it can at least be validated to an intenger or number)
--For state, you should make it a dropdown box unless you have an intern you don't particularly like that is responsible for cleaning up your data.
--For work status, you might break unemployed out into "Unemployed and looking for work" vs "unemployed and not looking for work"
--Degree - I know the standard is always to ask what is the highest degree earned, but I've always thought there should also be a question for highest degree worked toward but not completed. A person with an undergrad =/= a person who was a PhD candidate for a few years then decided to change tracks for whatever reason.
--Your Religious VIews is jarring to those of us in the tribe that is actually "theistic" or "diest" because usually don't call ourselves that. It would be like running a survey and asking if you are "libertarian" or "committed statist."
--Services attended in the last month is probably an important question as well
-- "Length of Time How long have you been reading SSC?" copy paste error or subtle messaging here?
--I'm just be a picky libertarian but you might want to replace "liberal" with "progressive" if your are going to have international respondants and/or picky libertarians taking this survey
Could you include a box for IQ? I had this weird idea (after hearing about the large fraction of LGBT students at some elite private college.) That there might be a correlation between IQ and being part of LGBT? (Maybe this study has already been done?) Is there too large a scatter in self-reported IQ? I ask as a cis hetero male, with slightly above average IQ, but probably below average for this group. Or do people find this question offensive? In which case it's not that important to me.
That might not be to do with IQ as much as "this place is gay-friendly" or "if you want to do drama, this is the best small liberal arts college" or something. People do tend to cluster around places where there are like-minded people. It could even be something as trivial as "I'm gay, I want to go there because I've heard there are a lot of gay students attending and I'll feel welcome and included and safe there".
https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/01/20/ssc-survey-results-2020/ and similar earlier posts have the full spreadsheets. (Those who didn't consent to publishing their answers are omitted, and sometimes a few more sensitive questions are omitted for everyone.)
It feels like you're really going to want to stress test every survey with some subset of the most pedantic, irritating, nit-picky data scientists in your audience group. Otherwise, most of the "interesting" results from the surveys are just going to be p-hacking or caused by confounders.
On this survey, for example, the option "I have family members (within two generations) with this condition" would seem to be totally pointless. It has two major problems:
The first is that "family" is ambiguous. I would guess that this means "blood-relative" and therefore omit my spouse and my sister through adoption, but you'll likely find that the interpretation of "family" is correlated with many of the other breakdowns on the survey, particularly the cultural ones. This may be a far bigger issue than you think, because parental mental illness could easily be a non-trivial reason for adoption, and if this is the case, then the way that people who were themselves adopted interpret "family" will bias your data.
The second, bigger problem is that there is a huge information gap here that is also going to be heavily correlated with many of the other breakdowns. You are not going to be able to determine the relative heritability of mental illness in people of east Asian descent unless religious conservative families in Pakistan tell their kids about granny's schizophrenia at the same rate as liberal families in California. This is going to compound the first problem, because people generally have extremely accurate information about the mental health of their spouse, who is not interesting, but far less accurate information about their ancestral blood relatives who are. This is going to add a ton of noise.
Almost any conclusion you draw from this is going to be akin to drawing constellations in the stars.
I think “did anyone in the family have x mental illness” is just a very common question for mental illnesses and is commonly seen to be related. Same for non mental illnesses. So people are already drawing conclusions from that in practice and it seems very useful, so may as well include it
I agree that it's messy, but it will tell you *something* that is a bit better than merely drawing constellations. If you're adopted because one of your parents was incapable, due to mental illness, of taking care of you, you may not know that. Equally, in your blood-relations, you may not know about Uncle Fred or Great-Granny Hannah and their "spells".
But if you *do* know something, either because of actual medical diagnosis or because you've heard the gossip at family gatherings about how "well, Aunt Frances always was that bit peculiar", then you have a better than nothing source of data right there.
1) Add "NEET" (not in education, employment, or training) as an option for the question "In what area do you currently work or study?"
2) The religious denomination question contains "Other" in both the last and second-to-last options. If you want to keep the last option (wherein people can write what they mean by "Other"), then it should be removed from the second-to-last option.
3) Among doctoral degrees (ie PhD and MD), which is higher? (Perhaps this is obvious to those who hold both PhDs and MDs, in which case I guess ignore this suggestion.)
4) Considering the results of previous surveys, you will likely get lots of people who see their politics as orthogonal to the classic Left-Right political spectrum. That question could perhaps be restructured to say something like "...and if you do not fall on the classic spectrum, inidcate where on the classic spectrum you find least objectionable?"
5) When asking people about political affiliation, are you interested in the respondent's affiliation relative to their countrymen, or in some more absolute sense? If in relation to the politics of their country, then lumping Republicans and Tories together makes sense (they occupy a similar cultural niche in each country), but if in a more absolute sense, Tories are more similar to Democrats than to Republicans on most policy questions.
6) On the mental illness questions, clarify what "within two generations" means -- for instance, are nieces and nephews / aunts and uncles within two generations?
7) On the mental illness questions, "I have a formal diagnosis" and "I have family members with this condition" can both be true. Similarly, "I think I might but have not been diagnosed" and "I have family member with this condition" can also both be true.
"6) On the mental illness questions, clarify what "within two generations" means -- for instance, are nieces and nephews / aunts and uncles within two generations?"
I'm taking it that it does - in a particular family, if you're really lucky, then not alone is it "my paternal/maternal grandparent had this", it could also be "and so did Aunt Joan (sibling of parent in question) and Cousin Fred (son of another sibling)" because genetics is fun like that.
Can you make the race question accept multiple answers or add a two or more races option, akin to the US Census? I find it mildly frustrating and potentially misleading to have to pick a single race as a mixed race person, particularly if this is supposed to be a proxy for genetics and/or culture.
Obviously, the subsurveys aren't from you, but this doesn't make sense:
"K on business (targeting people in tech)"
I suspect it's targeting generic businesspeople, who probably couldn't code their way out of a wet paper bag, but happen to be doing their vulture capital/MBA stock manipulation/etc. in a company that produces some kind of tech product.
Or it's the far too common attempt to understand how many tech people abandon tech in order to become (mis)managers and similar. (This is always presented as positive, but I disagree.)
Of course I'd love it to be about e.g. the attitudes and reactions of those actually doing tech to those who are instead doing "business", with or without prior experience and training doing tech.
The country thing is weird. I'm a Canadian who has lived in the US since 1992. I'd prefer to see country of citizenship and country of residence as separate questions. Phrased as it is, I'll identify with Canada and then (ignoring the "if American") also fill in the state in which I currently reside, producing what will appear to be incoherent data. Meanwhile American expats won't be able to answer the state question, even though you tell them to.
I don't "identify with" any race. This may be because of "white privilege" (I'm not picked on about race, so I can afford to be race blind.) But the idea of identifying with race isn't part of my personal reality. (The distinction between English and French Canadians is much more salient.)
Ditto with regard to identifying with a gender. (To the extent I group myself with similar people on gender-like grounds, it would be those who share the experience of being raised as girls.)
Are you next going to ask me what hair colour category I identify with, or what height category?
Race and gender are things other people ascribe to me, and then treat me according to their beliefs about "people like that".
Yes, I realize a lot of people do base their sense of self very much on their race and/or gender, and not always on a race/gender which would be obvious to a stranger judging based on their appearance.
OTOH, I've no idea how to square this circle. Whatever you ask, someone won't fit.
- Like others said, add nonbinary and asexual options (or at least make the "other" a write-in); make the race/ethnicity question checkboxable.
- Do people with ancestry from other parts of Asia (e.g., southeast Asia (like Vietnam), Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore) round to the nearest of "Asian (East Asian)" or "Asian (Indian subcontinent)"? This seems rather imprecise. Why split them up in the first place? If you're going to keep them separate, consider adding an "other Asian" option.
- Profession: What about students who aren't really studying their intended fields yet (e.g., most high-schoolers, many lower-division undergrads)? Should they select their intended fields, "other" (presumably white-collar), or what?
- "How long have you been reading SSC?": Is this length of time counted from "stumbled across link to SSC, read a couple of posts, left, and forgot about it for three years", from "started checking website to read new posts every few weeks", or from "reads almost every post written by Scott, and way too many comment threads, and should probably find a hobby other than reading blog posts"?
You specify a variety of denominations for Christianity, but none for Judaism - you could ask practicing/Non-practicing, or include any of Orthodox/Conservative/Reform/Reconstructionist/Humanist as options - I don't know if people would be interested in this, just a thought.
Good grief, you list "Philosophy" and "Art" (distinct from "Media") as anticipated professions among the readers, but have reduced the entire service sector to blue or white collar "other?"
You do realize that people with philosophy and art degrees are far more likely to be working in a service industry than as full-time philosophers and artists, right?
So maybe toss in "service industry," if not "food/hospitality" and/or "consumer services," and/or perhaps "building/construction?"
Not sure what "formal education" means in this context (just high school? all planned education in a formal setting?) and what extra information does it provide over the previous question
Seconding the below comment regarding the mental health questions. I don't know who counts as "in my family" - is it supposed to be genetic/raised with/currently living with?
Maybe this breakdown is more clear:
1. I have a formal diagnosis for myself
2. I suspect I have this
3. I don't know
4. I know I don't have this
Separate question on Relatives:
1. I know that a close genetic relative (at least 1/4 shared genes) has this
2. I don't know if my close genetic relatives have this
3. I'm very sure that none of my close genetic relatives has this.
Or smush the latter 3 in with #3 and make it one question with 7 options.
That makes it clear that you are interested in the survey takers mental diagnosis, or likelihood thereof.
"With which of these political descriptions do you most identify?"
needs an answer for people in the Social Justice movement, since it's the most-important political movement in the US today. The only option you've got that would even be acceptable to them is "socially democratic", which is hardly relevant to their political concerns (which are primarily critical race theory, post-colonialism, and gender identity).
Also, I'm curious how often being a social justice activist and a climate-change activist go together. That would require a separate question--perhaps a checkbox question asking people to check off up to 2 or 3 issues that are most important to them.
If your link / draft is meant to be accessible to those *not* running surveys, I don't think it's working. I get "DON'T TAKE THIS YET! THIS IS JUST AN EXAMPLE! This survey is no longer accepting responses."
+1. Also, even when I click on "See previous responses", I don't get to see what questions were asked - all I get is the text "No responses."
Sigh. How about now?
Works for me
Working - thanks!
The phrasing of
"Computers (other academic, computer science)
Computers (practical: IT, programming, etc.)"
is a little confusing, I initially read "academic, computer science" as giving two alternatives (either or), and then was confused when I saw "programming" in the next bullet. it might be clearer to just remove the comma.
Also, AI is no longer a purely academic discipline (in Computer Vision, it's pretty much "just another tool" by now), so the "other academic" is a bit confusing. I'm working with AI a lot, but I'm not doing any cutting-edge research (making some minor improvements as I go along, but any good programmer does that).
> Please keep this user ID saved - I might ask for it again on future ACX surveys so we can chain them together!
Your answer
I kinda doubt anyone’s gonna do this
i will, at least! I'm just going to make a text file called "ACX_SurveyID.txt" or something, it's no hassle. But yeah, I agree that a lot of people will lose their IDs. IDK what else Scott could do here ("please enter your email" or whatever would compromise anonymity).
I did this a while back - but I'd misplaced it before it came time for the next survey.
You could give people a hash algorithm to apply to their email, and ask them to apply the same one on subsequent surveys. "Google md5 online; paste in your email address; use the result for your id"
That doesn't provide anonymity unless a cryptographically sufficient random salt is used. See the page "Does Hashing Make Data Anonymous" by Ed Felten.
Good point, but might it still be enough for people with only moderate privacy concerns? Felten points out that hashing a billion SSNs could be done quickly; I haven't run the numbers but I presume that iterating through all possible email addresses (up to some reasonable length) would be much less feasible.
(Which isn't enough if you're worried about attackers who already know your email address, but might be sufficiently better than nothing for most people.)
Of course if you're asking for user-inputted IDs rather than assigning them automatically, you could just let people use a memorable sequence or phrase of their choice. I guess a fair portion will prove to be less memorable than intended though.
Maybe ask them to remember something that they can easily remember, and then put it on a third-party website that would derive a salted hash? It's a bit better but not by much.
Once we get the proper surveys up and running, I will keep my User ID but I agree, people are going to forget or misplace a random alphanumeric string. I suppose this will help sort out the committed to answering everything from the shy Tories?
Most of my passwords are 16-digit random strings, including a couple subscriptions I've cancelled. So instead of forgetting a random strings, I'm going to use either my old Hulu or Disney+ password.
Actually, I'll probably forget which one I picked and end up using both in an inconsistent pattern. But it's a different kind of failure than everyone else, so that makes me special
I added a note under my Substack credentials in my password manager, Bitwarden
* For the psychological conditions, there're a few where I want to answer both "Yes, I have a relative with a diagnosis of this" and "Yes, I think I have this but haven't been formally diagnosed." Please let me select both options or provide some guidance for which I should pick.
* "Age" currently accepts negative and decimal answers. Not sure if you want to bother fixing this, though.
* I'm surprised Poland and Finland make it to the ten most popular countries - is there a particular reason?
* You can probably get "State" to be a dropdown if you want to bother. But if you do, please remember to include the District of Columbia. (And maybe Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and American Samoa if you really want to be comprehensive.)
* Thank you for disambiguating the direction of transgender options.
What about Saipan as a U.S. 'state' too? Maybe 'other U.S. non-state territory' would suffice?
I know that nobody likes a whiner but could there be a Retired choice for ‘Job’?
I mean I’m doing okay and all but Independently Wealthy is overstating things.
I’ve always shared the Homemaking with my wife but…
And Unemployed just makes me feel like a deadbeat.
Good point. I have the opposite problem, I filled out some medical record indicating I'm a student (which is true) but I'm older, so some enterprising professional changed it to Retired without asking. When an MA was running down the list of questions at a subsequent appointment they said, "And you're retired?" and I was so surprised I just nodded and let it stand. Next time I see them I have to get them to fix it.
I feel similarly about the lack of a "Disabled" option. Unemployed is technically correct but it's not like I have a choice.
Should the libertarian option on your generic demographic survey read "minimal/no redistribution of wealth" rather than "minimal/no distribution of wealth"?
I suppose e.g. distributing the profits of a state run oil company might qualify as distribution of wealth that had not previously been distributed.
The profits have already been distributed—away from the people who drilled for oil and away from the people who paid for oil and towards a third group of people did nothing and deserve the same.
Sorry for the snark. It's just that being profitable doesn't mean a business is successful.
If a business is modestly profitable most of the time, that indicates a company provides something valuable and consumers pay a price that pays for the materials and employees who create that value--plus a little extra for expansion or in case next quarter is down. That's a successful company!
If a business is significantly profitable, that indicates that an opportunity exists for a competitor to offer consumers a lower price.
If an enterprise is massively profitable in all market conditions, that might indicate a situation where competition is ineffective and a utility model might function better than a market, or it could simply indicate a traditional advertising model, and a company that will be massively profitable for decades, then massive contract overnight! (Long ago: radio; recent past: newspapers; now: movies; near future: probably network TV, but we'll see; far future, but I hope to live to see it: social media.) Or maybe a new form of economic activity is emerging, and only a John Forbes Nash level genius can explain it. Or it could even indicate a situation where something other than economics is going on, and only a George Lucas level genius can explain it*.
Finally if a business is significantly profitable for an extended time, that indicates that something is preventing competition, which forces consumers to over pay. There are natural barriers, of course, and a whole host of government-created barriers, and consumers can be lazy, but mostly this is fraud. (The business model of a big chunk of the financial services industry, including most hedge funds, is to find way to avoid or reduce competition in order to raise prices—deliberately undermining the marker itself!) Bottom line is, there are only three options when competition stops keeping a business honest, each worse than the last 1) eliminate barriers until competitors emerge (difficult, but eventually status quo ante) 2) replace competition with some form of political accountability (certain to be less efficient and less stable, but better than) 3) pray the inevitable collapse destroys the employees, pensioners, customers and stockholders of the company without causing a recession or civil war.
Basically, to summarize, if a business makes sane profit, that means it's successful. If it makes literally crazy profit, it's either a fascinating, exciting mystery or a reasonable place to advertise soap. If a business makes figuratively crazy profit, it must me stopped before it's too late.
*I'm referring of course to "American Graffiti," not that hack sci-fi he made after selling out.
Scott, your definition for "alt-right" in the draft survey would encompass 90 million members of the Sino-Leninist CCP, given current PRC national policies and ambitions!
I mean, obviously CPC orthodoxy isn't "alternative" in a country they run, but given that the PRC's governance, society and economy are a near-perfect match to fascism (their claim to socialism has been a lie since Deng Xiaoping), I don't see the especial problem with putting its supporters into that category.
I agree, mostly. Fascism and Nazism are variants of the broader socialist spectrum, and part of the far-left continuum. The only thing "right wing" about those ideologies is that they are to the right of Communism, in tolerating private ownership of some of the means of production (as long as it obeys the edicts of the State) and approximately in the same ideological space as China is now. The ideological closeness of the main tenets of all these leftist camps, including also environmentalism, is the reason why they are so hard to distinguish in many of their campaigns and programs of action. It’s why it was so easy for Communist China to morph to Fascist China in a few short years – all the basic State authoritarian/oppression/control foundations are the same, it’s a matter of denationalizing or nationalizing key industries.
I sent a survey in last Friday (7/9) on motivations during the pandemic. It was very hastily done and if it is not up to par for inclusion that is fine with me. However, I am curious about what the results would be, so if you didn't get it, should I post a link here?
Here's the link.
https://forms.gle/my2hEpv2vozeiiRX8
Thanks. I hadn't gotten this before, but I've added it now. Please remember add a User ID field if you want that.
Thank you!
I added a User ID field. The demographic survey will be great. Do I need to send you a new link?
Don't mind me, just stress-testing your survey form. Good form allowing negative responses in number fields; will make it easier for you to calculate the lizardman's constant.
Hi Scott, mine didn't get in so I guess my email wasn't coming through. Here is the link to the survey:
https://forms.gle/hDgEZUdRvkeyH4AR9
Sorry, should have also left my contact details so this should work: scott @ floriswolswijk.com
On the depression question it might make sense to distinguish between people who are currently depressed and people who have been depressed. (Assuming thats not part of the definition of clinical depression in which case it would probably be good to explain what exactly clinical depression is)
Seconding this, it would be good for questions on pathologies to have a "I had a formal diagnosis for this condition but do not think it applies anymore" (or fold it into the first option, "I have or had a formal diagnosis").
Let the nitpicking begin! On the sexual orientation question, I'm never sure which option to pick - is asexuality an orientation as distinct from a subset within primary attraction? And I do see it tending to be lumped in under "queer" which is not what I identify with or as at all. If we're sticking with "gay, straight, bi or other", just be aware some of the "other" may be "cis het but not actively so"?
The politics is difficult, as well: I'm not a UK Conservative but I can't identify "like the Democratic Party - socially liberal multiculturalism".
Well, we all can't have everything we want.
I think asexuality should be listed separately, since it's distinct from gay, bi, and straight — an (aromantic, at least) asexual person would generally be incorrect in labeling themself as gay, bi, or straight.
Mmm, thing is, I find men (certain men, anyway) aesthetically attractive and appealing in a different way to how I find women. I can think about a woman "oh yes, she's pretty/beautiful" and that's it. With (certain) men it can be "Ooh my", but that's as far as it goes, I'm certainly not interested in anything more than that 😀
So if I had to put a description on it all, I'd say "cis, heterosexual, aromantic (very definitely, never had anything approaching 'falling in love' or any such feelings), asexual (but with "ooh my" about men)" which seems like a lot. I'm happy enough to be lumped in with the hets (a few years back, had some full and frank exchange of views on Tumblr with the "aces stop stinking up queer spaces, these are meant for LGBT+ people only" which was as much fighting on the topic as I cared to do).
So I'm not completely comfortable picking "other" and while I'm happy enough with "straight", as I said, it's "straight but theoretically, not one iota interested in practical application".
I guess that is a bit more complicated then... I'm not sure exactly how to represent that in survey options.
Interestingly, though, if I were to fit your description, I would probably identify much more toward the aromantic-asexual side, and not be happy about being "lumped in with the hets", because in my view classifying as "heterosexual" would pose a risk of being mistaken for someone who *is* interested in the "practical application". That's probably a cultural thing, and I'm not trying to attack your self-description or something.
I think basically it's because I am much older than the general run of online people talking about these kind of distinctions, and I only really discovered the entire concept of asexuality and aromanticism relatively recently.
So I'm more accustomed to describing myself as "well, I'm definitely not interested in women Like That and I kinda like guys, so I'm straight? I guess?" and when there was some comment about "yay, us aces are all part of the LGBTQIA+ umbrella!" I was "are we? well, if that's what you want to be under, then good for you, but I'm not part of the party" (the online fights I had were in response to some really shitty alleged 'ally' or 'we're True Queers' commentary, where it didn't gore my ox if those types didn't want me in the club, but the baby aces/aros who were really upset at the accusations got me putting my dukes up).
So yeah, I honestly don't care if I'm heteronormative or not, but younger persons who knew about this earlier and for longer may well feel that "other" suits them better. I agree with you that the *implication* there is that straight or gay or bi comes with "and you want to practice that", whereas there can be straight or gay or bi and also ace or aro or ace/aro.
Yeah, I am probably younger and more familiar with the online culture around this than you are, and I am noticeably but not horrendously bothered by the exclusionists, while I am bemused by those like you but am not going to barge in and argue with you about your own labels.
To me, the LGBTQIA+ umbrella includes everyone who isn't cisgender *and* heteroromantic *and* heterosexual, because it seems to me that society is clearly too obsessed with romance/sex for a{sexuality|romanticism} to be the norm. However, there are some competing access needs around the whole umbrella, because some people emphasizing their attraction and others emphasizing their lack of attraction can sometimes conflict in terms of what some members of each group are looking for (e.g., Alice Aroace joins a group looking for a refuge from people constantly talking about romance, and then is met by Bob Bisexual talking about his crushes, or something like that).
I will admit that ACX is the last place I expected to end up in a discussion about the dynamics of the aro/ace relationship to the rest of the LGBTQI+ community.
"straight but theoretically, not one iota interested in practical application".
I have known so many cis women in this category. Enough that I think "queer" as in "unusual" makes no sense. While "spinster" may be accurate in certain cases, the age connotations make it less than ideal.
Not sure if it's possible on whatever platform he's using, but perhaps A modifier option would help? "Round to" [orientation], or [orientation] "but disinterested." Would also be useful for those of us in long-term stable situations that don't necessarily match our whole orientation (for example, a bi person in a long-term gay relationship).
I'm of the age to be well into "spinster" territory, indeed into "maiden aunt" territory like Bertie Wooster's terrifying aunts or Betsy Trotwood in "David Copperfield" 😁
There is a difference between "would like but am very picky, have had relationships before" and "can appreciate 🔥HOT GUIZE🔥 but not one bit interested in anything but Looking Respectfully".
Suppose we can't. I think Marxism/communism could stand to be parcelled out a little more, too - on the authoritarian vs anarchist or perhaps socially progressive vs 'dirtbag left' spectrum. I can understand how quickly all that could get out of hand, though.
Well, I mean, this is my politics, or rather the forebear of the party I was reared up in (which the modern incarnation of is somewhat different): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbgPpG8pO8U
If we shall continue to insist on playing politics-politics this is the kind of erudite rhetorics I'd like to hear rather than the mealy-mouthed media-trained nonsense we're fed today! Bravo, Eamon, sock it to him!
I noticed the absence of a distinct/specific anarchist option as well. Seems weird to put authoritarian communists and anarcho-communists in the same bucket, although I suppose either way they're still a very small portion of ACX's readership.
And what about the authoritarian anarchists and anarchist authoritarians? Will nobody think of their representation? 😁
I admire Scott's bravery in putting up surveys about the readership because if ever there was a case of herding cats, it's us.
I feel like "high taxes, traditional values" is missing as a political alignment. It doesn't really fit *me*, but it's not an inconsistent position or anything, and the existing categories don't really cover it.
"Within two generations" seems somewhat ambiguous. Are first cousins counted? Great-aunts/great-uncles?
"Drug addiction" should probably also exclude caffeine (technically all the methylxanthines, but I imagine anyone who knows that cocoa and tea have slightly-different alkaloids knows that they behave substantially as caffeine).
For Gender, which currently has five options (CM, CF, TM, TF, Other) - I would appreciate the option of "Non-Binary" (or "Transgender Non-Binary"), which seem to be about 30% of transgender people.
Sexual Orientation and Relationship Status could include "Asexual" and "Aromantic".
Work Status seems like it should allow multiple answers. A person can be both self-employed and work for profit, or both a student and a non-profit volunteer.
Profession seems to have high resolution for sciences but very low resolution for anything else. Maybe you should just include the top 20 most common professions in the world / in the US.
Under Length of Time, "How long have you been reading SSC?" - maybe mention ACX since it's the new website's name?
In Political Interest, I think this scale should be 1...10 just like the previous one, instead of 1..5.
In Depression, Anxiety, OCD, etc.... there are currently four options (diagnosed, undiagnosed, in family, neither of the above). I think this should be split into two questions each - one for yourself (diagnosed, undiagnosed, previously afflicted, none) and one for your family (in extended family, not in extended family (not including yourself)).
To add on to your last point, this could also be accomplished by just making the answers checkboxes instead of radio buttons, so you could select any combination of the answers (e.g. in family and undiagnosed, or not in family and diagnosed, etc...) without adding additional questions.
> Profession seems to have high resolution for sciences but very low resolution for anything else. Maybe you should just include the top 20 most common professions in the world / in the US.
Suspicion: this is caused based on the demographics of the readership. If the population at-large is used, we're going to end up with about 75% of the readership in one of the "normal" buckets and not enough people in the rest of the buckets to extract any useful data.
If this was a survey of professional baseball players, it would make sense to ask about which field position they play. But in this survey I doubt that we'd have enough professional athletes to even be able to get a useful signal out of a bucket like that.
Agree with almost all the stuff in this comment, although other people have good points about the granularity of scientific professions being useful.
However, if the survey doesn't split up romantic v. sexual orientation, it doesn't really make sense to include aromanticism but not the other ones in the set, and I'm a bit bemused at the proposal that asexuality and/or aromanticism could be classified under "relationship status". However, I think "single and interested in dating" v. "single and not interested in dating" could be disambiguated, because that might be confusing.
I suppose the easiest thing is just to leave a text box under "Other" for respondents to fill in about are they ace/aro/this, that or the other, rather than trying to include 99 varieties and combinations for a selection.
Yeah, but I think asexuality specifically could be reasonably given its own option.
Avoids the typos and data messes as well. (Darn, why do I always remember a point right after posting the comment?)
Puzzling over in my head if you couldn't just do a list of genders (and then other) and put 2 checkboxes for each asking if you are romantically or sexually interesting in people with this identity. Solves for many many situations at once.
I think Scott said elsewhere that he doesn't like checkboxes on Google Forms because they make analysis harder... were it not for that, I think your solution would be pretty reasonable (as long as there's an option for "none"), except that people tend to define attraction in terms of the relation of the two people's genders (which doesn't make sense in my view).
I periodic request I make: ask the user *when they are at the end of the survey* if they want their information publicly available or not.
I recall the survey asking at the front, people filling it out, and forgetting while leaving personally identifiable information somewhere along the way, and people would email to try to undo their entry.
At the beginning, mention that you'll ask at the end, and to consider that while they answer. Then, at the end, ask them to give their final answer.
Possible suggestions:
--For age, you might want to ask "what is the year of your birth" and force it to accept a year (I think you can do that, if not it can at least be validated to an intenger or number)
--For state, you should make it a dropdown box unless you have an intern you don't particularly like that is responsible for cleaning up your data.
--For work status, you might break unemployed out into "Unemployed and looking for work" vs "unemployed and not looking for work"
--Degree - I know the standard is always to ask what is the highest degree earned, but I've always thought there should also be a question for highest degree worked toward but not completed. A person with an undergrad =/= a person who was a PhD candidate for a few years then decided to change tracks for whatever reason.
--Your Religious VIews is jarring to those of us in the tribe that is actually "theistic" or "diest" because usually don't call ourselves that. It would be like running a survey and asking if you are "libertarian" or "committed statist."
--Services attended in the last month is probably an important question as well
-- "Length of Time How long have you been reading SSC?" copy paste error or subtle messaging here?
--I'm just be a picky libertarian but you might want to replace "liberal" with "progressive" if your are going to have international respondants and/or picky libertarians taking this survey
Could you include a box for IQ? I had this weird idea (after hearing about the large fraction of LGBT students at some elite private college.) That there might be a correlation between IQ and being part of LGBT? (Maybe this study has already been done?) Is there too large a scatter in self-reported IQ? I ask as a cis hetero male, with slightly above average IQ, but probably below average for this group. Or do people find this question offensive? In which case it's not that important to me.
That might not be to do with IQ as much as "this place is gay-friendly" or "if you want to do drama, this is the best small liberal arts college" or something. People do tend to cluster around places where there are like-minded people. It could even be something as trivial as "I'm gay, I want to go there because I've heard there are a lot of gay students attending and I'll feel welcome and included and safe there".
Very true. (My daughter was very much into the drama club in high school.) They could be smarter too.
IIRC previous SSC surveys asked both IQ and sexual orientation, so you can look if there was a correlation.
I think I saw that. (I started reading SSC ~ 1-2 years before it went away.) Is there some way to access the old survey data?
https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/01/20/ssc-survey-results-2020/ and similar earlier posts have the full spreadsheets. (Those who didn't consent to publishing their answers are omitted, and sometimes a few more sensitive questions are omitted for everyone.)
It feels like you're really going to want to stress test every survey with some subset of the most pedantic, irritating, nit-picky data scientists in your audience group. Otherwise, most of the "interesting" results from the surveys are just going to be p-hacking or caused by confounders.
On this survey, for example, the option "I have family members (within two generations) with this condition" would seem to be totally pointless. It has two major problems:
The first is that "family" is ambiguous. I would guess that this means "blood-relative" and therefore omit my spouse and my sister through adoption, but you'll likely find that the interpretation of "family" is correlated with many of the other breakdowns on the survey, particularly the cultural ones. This may be a far bigger issue than you think, because parental mental illness could easily be a non-trivial reason for adoption, and if this is the case, then the way that people who were themselves adopted interpret "family" will bias your data.
The second, bigger problem is that there is a huge information gap here that is also going to be heavily correlated with many of the other breakdowns. You are not going to be able to determine the relative heritability of mental illness in people of east Asian descent unless religious conservative families in Pakistan tell their kids about granny's schizophrenia at the same rate as liberal families in California. This is going to compound the first problem, because people generally have extremely accurate information about the mental health of their spouse, who is not interesting, but far less accurate information about their ancestral blood relatives who are. This is going to add a ton of noise.
Almost any conclusion you draw from this is going to be akin to drawing constellations in the stars.
I think “did anyone in the family have x mental illness” is just a very common question for mental illnesses and is commonly seen to be related. Same for non mental illnesses. So people are already drawing conclusions from that in practice and it seems very useful, so may as well include it
I agree that it's messy, but it will tell you *something* that is a bit better than merely drawing constellations. If you're adopted because one of your parents was incapable, due to mental illness, of taking care of you, you may not know that. Equally, in your blood-relations, you may not know about Uncle Fred or Great-Granny Hannah and their "spells".
But if you *do* know something, either because of actual medical diagnosis or because you've heard the gossip at family gatherings about how "well, Aunt Frances always was that bit peculiar", then you have a better than nothing source of data right there.
Suggestions for the demographic survey:
1) Add "NEET" (not in education, employment, or training) as an option for the question "In what area do you currently work or study?"
2) The religious denomination question contains "Other" in both the last and second-to-last options. If you want to keep the last option (wherein people can write what they mean by "Other"), then it should be removed from the second-to-last option.
3) Among doctoral degrees (ie PhD and MD), which is higher? (Perhaps this is obvious to those who hold both PhDs and MDs, in which case I guess ignore this suggestion.)
4) Considering the results of previous surveys, you will likely get lots of people who see their politics as orthogonal to the classic Left-Right political spectrum. That question could perhaps be restructured to say something like "...and if you do not fall on the classic spectrum, inidcate where on the classic spectrum you find least objectionable?"
5) When asking people about political affiliation, are you interested in the respondent's affiliation relative to their countrymen, or in some more absolute sense? If in relation to the politics of their country, then lumping Republicans and Tories together makes sense (they occupy a similar cultural niche in each country), but if in a more absolute sense, Tories are more similar to Democrats than to Republicans on most policy questions.
6) On the mental illness questions, clarify what "within two generations" means -- for instance, are nieces and nephews / aunts and uncles within two generations?
7) On the mental illness questions, "I have a formal diagnosis" and "I have family members with this condition" can both be true. Similarly, "I think I might but have not been diagnosed" and "I have family member with this condition" can also both be true.
"6) On the mental illness questions, clarify what "within two generations" means -- for instance, are nieces and nephews / aunts and uncles within two generations?"
I'm taking it that it does - in a particular family, if you're really lucky, then not alone is it "my paternal/maternal grandparent had this", it could also be "and so did Aunt Joan (sibling of parent in question) and Cousin Fred (son of another sibling)" because genetics is fun like that.
Can you make the race question accept multiple answers or add a two or more races option, akin to the US Census? I find it mildly frustrating and potentially misleading to have to pick a single race as a mixed race person, particularly if this is supposed to be a proxy for genetics and/or culture.
Agree — it strikes me as odd that this question isn't automatically set up with checkboxes.
For the mental illness questions, should there be an option like, "Diagnosed in the past but currently in remission"?
Obviously, the subsurveys aren't from you, but this doesn't make sense:
"K on business (targeting people in tech)"
I suspect it's targeting generic businesspeople, who probably couldn't code their way out of a wet paper bag, but happen to be doing their vulture capital/MBA stock manipulation/etc. in a company that produces some kind of tech product.
Or it's the far too common attempt to understand how many tech people abandon tech in order to become (mis)managers and similar. (This is always presented as positive, but I disagree.)
Of course I'd love it to be about e.g. the attitudes and reactions of those actually doing tech to those who are instead doing "business", with or without prior experience and training doing tech.
Currently imagining taking a 2 hour demographic survey with every single persons suggested questions and variations included
The country thing is weird. I'm a Canadian who has lived in the US since 1992. I'd prefer to see country of citizenship and country of residence as separate questions. Phrased as it is, I'll identify with Canada and then (ignoring the "if American") also fill in the state in which I currently reside, producing what will appear to be incoherent data. Meanwhile American expats won't be able to answer the state question, even though you tell them to.
I don't "identify with" any race. This may be because of "white privilege" (I'm not picked on about race, so I can afford to be race blind.) But the idea of identifying with race isn't part of my personal reality. (The distinction between English and French Canadians is much more salient.)
Ditto with regard to identifying with a gender. (To the extent I group myself with similar people on gender-like grounds, it would be those who share the experience of being raised as girls.)
Are you next going to ask me what hair colour category I identify with, or what height category?
Race and gender are things other people ascribe to me, and then treat me according to their beliefs about "people like that".
Yes, I realize a lot of people do base their sense of self very much on their race and/or gender, and not always on a race/gender which would be obvious to a stranger judging based on their appearance.
OTOH, I've no idea how to square this circle. Whatever you ask, someone won't fit.
I think you can round off "What X to you identify with?" to "What would you say your X is if asked on a form where you had to give a response?"
None _can_ be a response, but the word "identify" should not be the issue.
Suggestions:
- Like others said, add nonbinary and asexual options (or at least make the "other" a write-in); make the race/ethnicity question checkboxable.
- Do people with ancestry from other parts of Asia (e.g., southeast Asia (like Vietnam), Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore) round to the nearest of "Asian (East Asian)" or "Asian (Indian subcontinent)"? This seems rather imprecise. Why split them up in the first place? If you're going to keep them separate, consider adding an "other Asian" option.
- Profession: What about students who aren't really studying their intended fields yet (e.g., most high-schoolers, many lower-division undergrads)? Should they select their intended fields, "other" (presumably white-collar), or what?
- "How long have you been reading SSC?": Is this length of time counted from "stumbled across link to SSC, read a couple of posts, left, and forgot about it for three years", from "started checking website to read new posts every few weeks", or from "reads almost every post written by Scott, and way too many comment threads, and should probably find a hobby other than reading blog posts"?
You specify a variety of denominations for Christianity, but none for Judaism - you could ask practicing/Non-practicing, or include any of Orthodox/Conservative/Reform/Reconstructionist/Humanist as options - I don't know if people would be interested in this, just a thought.
Good grief, you list "Philosophy" and "Art" (distinct from "Media") as anticipated professions among the readers, but have reduced the entire service sector to blue or white collar "other?"
You do realize that people with philosophy and art degrees are far more likely to be working in a service industry than as full-time philosophers and artists, right?
So maybe toss in "service industry," if not "food/hospitality" and/or "consumer services," and/or perhaps "building/construction?"
"- A on biostasis/cryonics"
What does the letter here mean?
Initial of the person who made the survey, so people can recognize theirs
Not sure what "formal education" means in this context (just high school? all planned education in a formal setting?) and what extra information does it provide over the previous question
Neither of my initials is on the list. I'm giving you edit privs on my survey, so you'll get an email with a link to it.
Seconding the below comment regarding the mental health questions. I don't know who counts as "in my family" - is it supposed to be genetic/raised with/currently living with?
Maybe this breakdown is more clear:
1. I have a formal diagnosis for myself
2. I suspect I have this
3. I don't know
4. I know I don't have this
Separate question on Relatives:
1. I know that a close genetic relative (at least 1/4 shared genes) has this
2. I don't know if my close genetic relatives have this
3. I'm very sure that none of my close genetic relatives has this.
Or smush the latter 3 in with #3 and make it one question with 7 options.
That makes it clear that you are interested in the survey takers mental diagnosis, or likelihood thereof.
I think that your demographics survey question
"With which of these political descriptions do you most identify?"
needs an answer for people in the Social Justice movement, since it's the most-important political movement in the US today. The only option you've got that would even be acceptable to them is "socially democratic", which is hardly relevant to their political concerns (which are primarily critical race theory, post-colonialism, and gender identity).
Also, I'm curious how often being a social justice activist and a climate-change activist go together. That would require a separate question--perhaps a checkbox question asking people to check off up to 2 or 3 issues that are most important to them.