Project summary

The Surveys & Data Analysis team at Rethink Priorities has run the EA Survey between 2014-2023, and needs your funding to make it happen once again. 

The survey typically covers a broad range of useful topics like demographics, community experience and mental health, cause prioritization. Each year it informs judgements by EA orgs and community members about what helps EAs have an impact, community health, EA growth and more.

The project is already halfway funded by the EA Infrastructure Fund, but they want to see other actors contributing for the kind of public good that it is. We also value being funded by a diverse array of different funders in the community so that we are independent of any single actor. This Manifund EA Community Choice seems a perfect occasion to show to institutional funders that you see value in having access to updated data about the EA community.

What are this project's goals? How will you achieve them?

The primary goals of the EA Survey project are:

1. To gather comprehensive, up-to-date data on the effective altruism community

2. To track changes and trends within the EA movement over time

3. To provide valuable insights that can inform decision-making and strategy within the EA community

We aim to achieve these goals through the following methods:

1. Comprehensive data collection: Building on previous years’ editions, we will design and distribute a detailed survey to a wide range of EA community members. The survey will cover key areas such as demographics, cause prioritization, career choices, donation patterns, and engagement with EA ideas and organizations.

2. Robust sampling and outreach: We will employ multiple outreach strategies to reach a broad range of the community. This includes leveraging EA forums, social media platforms, local EA groups, and partnering with EA organizations to distribute the survey. As in previous years, we’ll assess the extent to which the results are sensitive to respondents being recruited from different sources, and how this varies across years.

3. Data analysis and trend identification: Our team will conduct thorough statistical analyses of the survey responses. We'll compare results with data from previous years to identify significant trends and changes within the community. Such analysis is crucial for understanding how the EA movement is evolving.

4. Subgroup analysis: We'll perform detailed analyses of various subgroups within the EA community (e.g., by cause area preference, level of engagement, or geographic location) to provide nuanced insights into different segments of the movement.

5. Data visualization and accessibility: To make our findings accessible and actionable, we'll create clear, informative visualizations and infographics. These will help communicate complex data trends in an easily digestible format.

6. Public reporting and targeted outreach: We'll publish a comprehensive report on the EA Forum and other relevant platforms. Additionally, we'll create tailored briefings and custom analyses for key decision-makers in EA organizations, highlighting findings most relevant to their work.

By achieving these goals, the EA Survey will provide a vital resource for understanding the current state of the EA movement, informing strategic decisions, and helping to shape the future direction of effective altruism.

How will this funding be used?

The funding will be used primarily for staff costs to execute all phases of the EA Survey project:

1. Survey design: Refining questions, ensuring methodological rigor, and pilot testing.

2. Survey distribution: Implementing outreach strategies to ensure broad and representative participation.

3. Data collection and management: Securely gathering and storing responses.

4. Data analysis: Conducting comprehensive statistical analyses, including trend and subgroup comparisons.

5. Reporting: Writing detailed reports, creating data visualizations, and preparing targeted briefings.

6. Community engagement: Presenting findings, answering follow-up questions, and facilitating discussions around the results.

Additional funding will help us continue to run the EA Survey, and provide the same standard of community report and pro bono private analyses for different groups and individuals, while also ensuring that the survey is not dependent on any individual funder.

The extent of analysis performed and shared stands in direct relation to the funding this project receives. If we hit funding above $40k, additional funding could allow for:

• More sophisticated statistical analyses, including advanced modeling techniques

• Creation of interactive data visualizations for better community engagement

• Extended longitudinal analyses, comparing results more deeply with previous years

• Dedicated time for team members to engage with EA organizations to discuss implications of findings

Furthermore, increased funding would support the production of auxiliary materials such as summary reports, infographics, and presentation decks, making the survey results more accessible to various stakeholders within the EA community.

Who is on your team? What's your track record on similar projects?

Rethink Priorities’ Survey and Data Analysis Team is composed of Senior Behavioral Scientists, Willem Sleegers (LinkedIn, Scholar, Website), who is also a Research Affiliate at Tilburg University, and Jamie Elsey (LinkedIn, Scholar, Website), and managed by Principal Research Director, David Moss, (LinkedIn, Scholar), who each worked on multiple academic projects prior to joining Rethink Priorities. 

The team has carried out the EA Survey between 2014-2022 (and the Supplemental EA Survey in 2023).

Rethink Priorities’ Surveys and Data Analysis Team also has an extensive track record of conducting other high quality projects targeted at the interests of actors in the EA and longtermist space. Since hiring Jamie and Willem about two years ago, we have completed over 40 substantial projects, plus over 50 smaller consultations, including multiple commissions for Open Philanthropy, the Centre for Effective Altruism, 80,000 Hours, Forethought Foundation, Longview and others.

As most (>80%) of these projects are private commissions, we cannot share many of them, however, they have included:

• Many message testing experiments for EA orgs

  • e.g. the examples discussed by Will MacAskill here

  • Tests of different ads (written and video)

  • Tests of different names for orgs/projects

• Surveys of public attitudes 

  • A series on public attitudes towards AI

  • Germicidal UV light for pandemic prevention

  • How many people have heard of EA

  • Human Challenge Trials

  • Attitudes towards EA post-FTX

• Impact surveys / reports

  • A couple of major orgs / projects (private)

• Academic reports on

  • Public and expert attitudes towards human challenge trials

  • Perspectives of volunteers in human challenge trials

  • Developing a scale for attitudes towards wild animal welfare
    

What are the most likely causes and outcomes if this project fails?

Given the team’s strong track record as a team and organization, we place low probability on the risk of operational difficulties or a low-quality product.

One possible 'failure' mode is if the survey results are accurate and robust but practically uninteresting. For example, if we find no significant changes in the EA community's demographics, cause prioritization, or donation patterns compared to previous years. However, this would only be a qualified 'failure', since knowing that the EA community's characteristics and preferences remain stable would itself be valuable information. It could inform decision-making and potentially redirect EA resources away from addressing perceived changes that aren't actually occurring. Also a lack of change would in any case be a useful data point for how the community develops over longer periods of time.

Another practical failure mode is that the results are useful and actionable, but decision-makers within the EA community do not update on them. Our core plan involves publishing the results publicly on the EA Forum and other relevant platforms, where key audiences are likely to encounter them. However, we will also reach out to influential organizations and community leaders directly regarding the results. With larger amounts of funding, we can dedicate more time to in-depth analysis, creating visualizations, and engaging in targeted outreach to ensure decision-makers are aware of the survey findings and understand how to leverage them. We also believe that the project being funded by a public funding mechanism like Manifund could help advertise the project and increase visibility.

One potential failure mode is if stakeholders update on the results more than is warranted. To guard against this, we will be very clear in our writeup about what conclusions are or are not justified by the findings. We'll provide clear quantifications of trends, including margins of error and confidence intervals, and work to make these accessible to all readers. Additionally, with more funding, we can expand our sample size and conduct more detailed subgroup analyses to ensure that results are robust and representative of the broader EA community.

What other funding are you or your project getting?

This project is already financed to 50% by EA Funds. This is a model they also used for the supplemental 2023 EA Survey, where their rationale in a previous payout report for funding half, was:
“We thought EAIF’s ‘fair share’ ought to be half of that, capturing intuitions that survey results are a diffuse public good and the benefits are widely shared”

Our Surveys & Data Analysis department does not receive any general funding to conduct projects of this nature, nor do we have dedicated funds for departmental support. Moreover, each year we provide many private custom analyses to groups (e.g. EA local groups) who cannot afford to pay for analyses, which we provide pro bono. 

We have previously received funding from a number of core orgs for additional private reports based on EA Survey data. But these are for work above and beyond running the survey and providing the key public report. 

While we have undertaken numerous commissioned projects for various decision-makers, these are typically confidential engagements with results that cannot be publicly shared.