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Rethink Priorities is running a ‘non-EA Survey’ to help understand why some people who had an interest in effective altruism either encounter EA but choose not to engage or engage but then choose to disengage.
As this population is hard to reach, we are asking for your help in referring people who you know who meet our criteria to take this survey. Please read the information below about who we’re trying to reach with this survey.
Why this survey?
Our information about what causes people not to engage with effective altruism has long been both limited and skewed.
We have significant information (2019, 2020, 2022, 2023, 2024a, 2024b) about why people who are still engaged with effective altruism are dissatisfied with the community. But, of course, information from people who have not left the community may differ significantly from that of those who have.
We are hopeful that by gathering systematic data from a larger number of people who are not engaged with effective altruism, we can better understand barriers to engagement.
To be clear, due to the difficulties of reaching this sample, the sample will still likely be unrepresentative in important ways. Nevertheless, we are hopeful that this can improve on the informal anecdotal evidence that has been our only window into this population so far. We have already completed a number of more targeted recruitment rounds, through a number of community channels, and are now sampling via the Forum to potentially reach a larger and more varied sample. We’ll analyze these sub-samples separately in our analysis.
Who we are (not) trying to reach
For a number of reasons (described below), we’re targeting a very specific population for this research. Specifically, we’re aiming to recruit people who:
- Were interested in effective altruism, at least at some point; and either
- Encountered effective altruism, but chose not to engage or
- Encountered effective altruism but have disengaged
Importantly, we’re not aiming to recruit people who have somewhat disengaged from effective altruism, but remain non-trivially engaged, for this research.
We think this is also an important group to understand. However, we have limited resources for this project (we are funded to recruit up to 200 people), so we are focusing on the most neglected group. Prior work has already examined people who have reduced engagement with the community. Moreover, people who are still somewhat engaged with EA are much easier to recruit than those who are not. So, if we sampled these people, we would likely end up with a sample predominantly of people still engaged with EA.
Please share this survey with suitable people
We are asking you to please consider sharing this survey with people who meet the criteria above: https://rethinkpriorities.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_bDFGJUOa2FoERBs?source=EAF
Due to the difficulty of reaching this population, referrals to people you know who meet our criteria are extremely valuable.
So that we can reach a diverse group of people, we would encourage you to please share the survey only with select individuals, rather than with larger groups.
About the survey
We anticipate that the survey will take less than 10 minutes to complete, with the opportunity to provide more detail if one wishes.
Responses will remain completely anonymous and no personally identifying information will be asked for.
As a gesture of our appreciation, each respondent who completes the survey will be able to direct $100 to a charity of their choice on the Giving What We Can platform.
Questions or concerns are welcome in the comments or by email to [email protected].
