* It's probably not great practice to title the survey with what you're trying to investigate, as that could bias the results.
* Some of the questions are required, and others are optional. It seems arbitrary which is which, and the instructions say that they're all required in order to earn a prize.
* The "do you understand X" questions at the beginning are excessive; I expect many people will quit out of boredom before finishing the first page.
* Ok this is pedantic, but "two" is a number. If you want people to write it out in *digits*, I would just say that. :)
* The current prize system has no incentive for people to share the poll, and for those who are eligible to fill it out there's an incentive not to, since it makes them less likely to win if more people answer. To fix that you could do something like "please put the name of the person who referred you", and award a random prize to a randomly selected referrer.
* I expect you'd get more new readers if you include a direct link to your Substack in the last question rather than making people find it themselves.
The title mentioning 'personality' is inspired by social psychology studies involving some degree of deception which often say they are about 'personality' to avoid saying something more specific. Many places I have posted the survey require you to be upfront about what it's about, and saying it's about personality and distribution was something honest I could say without giving the whole game away.
Yes the required/non-required questions is a bug that I don't understand.
Yes they probably are excessive. Partly this was based on a consideration that I initially expected many respondents to not be confident English speakers, and it was vital for both ethical reasons and for survey reasons they understand what is going on.
Yes, I should have had a referral system
I probably should have included a link, but I didn't want people to feel like the whole thing was just a self-promotion trap, in hindsight this was probably too scrupulous.
I took the survey. Some questions seemed ambiguous or lacked appropriate answers.
E.g. the question, which is a bigger problem, society punishing too much or not enough? It was probably stated better than that, but still very binary. I don’t know how to evaluate the effectiveness of punishment, and if the subtext the question activates for me is appropriate, there is a lot more to be said. I think some violent crimes go unpunished, even uncharged. I might be wrong. I think there are many nonsense laws, which people get punished for too often. I do not know how to compare these for badness. It seems more of a question of the unresponsiveness of government to the concerns of ordinary people. Voting (letter writing, etc.) seems to be a weak feedback mechanism, unable to address this sort of thing reliably.
I was linked to it by ACX. Unfortunately I was put off by the request to not skip any questions. Sometimes I like to leave out some personal information, especially email.
Shared on Twitter/Facebook/Substack.
Some feedback/thoughts:
* It's probably not great practice to title the survey with what you're trying to investigate, as that could bias the results.
* Some of the questions are required, and others are optional. It seems arbitrary which is which, and the instructions say that they're all required in order to earn a prize.
* The "do you understand X" questions at the beginning are excessive; I expect many people will quit out of boredom before finishing the first page.
* Ok this is pedantic, but "two" is a number. If you want people to write it out in *digits*, I would just say that. :)
* The current prize system has no incentive for people to share the poll, and for those who are eligible to fill it out there's an incentive not to, since it makes them less likely to win if more people answer. To fix that you could do something like "please put the name of the person who referred you", and award a random prize to a randomly selected referrer.
* I expect you'd get more new readers if you include a direct link to your Substack in the last question rather than making people find it themselves.
The title mentioning 'personality' is inspired by social psychology studies involving some degree of deception which often say they are about 'personality' to avoid saying something more specific. Many places I have posted the survey require you to be upfront about what it's about, and saying it's about personality and distribution was something honest I could say without giving the whole game away.
Yes the required/non-required questions is a bug that I don't understand.
Yes they probably are excessive. Partly this was based on a consideration that I initially expected many respondents to not be confident English speakers, and it was vital for both ethical reasons and for survey reasons they understand what is going on.
Yes, I should have had a referral system
I probably should have included a link, but I didn't want people to feel like the whole thing was just a self-promotion trap, in hindsight this was probably too scrupulous.
I didn’t get much from the title, at a conscious level anyhow.
> It's probably not great practice to title the survey with what you're trying to investigate, as that could bias the results.
Oh, I guess you also mention it in the questions, so whatever.
I restacked it. Hope that's helpful.
I took the survey. Some questions seemed ambiguous or lacked appropriate answers.
E.g. the question, which is a bigger problem, society punishing too much or not enough? It was probably stated better than that, but still very binary. I don’t know how to evaluate the effectiveness of punishment, and if the subtext the question activates for me is appropriate, there is a lot more to be said. I think some violent crimes go unpunished, even uncharged. I might be wrong. I think there are many nonsense laws, which people get punished for too often. I do not know how to compare these for badness. It seems more of a question of the unresponsiveness of government to the concerns of ordinary people. Voting (letter writing, etc.) seems to be a weak feedback mechanism, unable to address this sort of thing reliably.
And it asked about my income, instead of my household income, which is quite different.
Just some feedback: It was difficult to answer the policy questions since they are so broad which is why I put down unsure for most of them.
I was linked to it by ACX. Unfortunately I was put off by the request to not skip any questions. Sometimes I like to leave out some personal information, especially email.