EA - EA Survey 2022: Community Satisfaction, Retention, and Mental Health by WillemSleegers

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: EA Survey 2022: Community Satisfaction, Retention, and Mental Health, published by WillemSleegers on July 28, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.SummaryCommunity satisfaction remains high, though is slightly lower post-FTX.More recent cohorts report being more satisfied than earlier cohorts.Respondents identifying as a man were, on average, more satisfied than other respondents.We observed no significant differences in satisfaction based on racial identity.Highly engaged respondents were, on average, more satisfied than less engaged respondents.Prioritizing longtermist causes relative to neartermist causes was associated with higher satisfaction with the communityA large majority (84.1%) of respondents report they are likely to still be involved in EA in three years' time, while only a small minority (5.1%) thought it unlikely they would still be involved.Respondents who identified as a man reported being slightly more likely to remain in the community.We observed no significant differences in retention based on racial identity.More engaged respondents reported being significantly more likely to remain in EA.Higher endorsement of longtermist causes was associated with being more likely to remain in EA, while higher endorsement of neartermist causes was associated with being less likely to remain in EA.More respondents reported that their experiences with EA had improved their mental health (36.8%) than said that it had worsened (16.4%), while 36.0% said that it had stayed the same.Men were somewhat less likely to say that their mental health had greatly decreased.Respondents not identifying as white were more likely to report that their mental health had greatly increased.Respondents higher in EA engagement were more likely to report both that their mental health had increased or that it had decreased as a result of EA, whereas those lower in engagement were much more likely to report that it had stayed the same.IntroductionIn this post, we report on a number of questions about people's satisfaction with the EA community, their likelihood of remaining in EA, and EA's impact on their mental health. Note that we significantly shortened the EA Survey this year, meaning there are fewer community-related questions than in the previous EA Survey.SatisfactionRespondents indicated being generally satisfied with the EA community, scoring an average of 7.16 (SD = 1.66) on a 10-point scale. The median satisfaction response was a 7.As we noted in our recent post on community responses to the FTX crisis, community satisfaction seems to have declined following the FTX crisis. In 2020, respondents reported an average satisfaction of 7.26 (SD = 1.72). In 2022, the average of all respondents was 7.16 (SD = 1.66) and 6.95 (SD = 1.72) for respondents who completed the survey after the FTX crisis. It's also possible that much less satisfied respondents disengaged from the EA community and did not take the survey. Had they participated, the average satisfaction post-FTX could be lower than what we report here.CohortRespondents who recently joined the EA community seem to be more satisfied with the community than earlier cohorts. This pattern is less clear for the earliest cohorts, possibly because the sample size for these groups is relatively small compared to newer cohorts.GenderRespondents identifying as a man were, on average, more satisfied with the EA community (M = 7.31, SD = 1.58) than respondents not identifying as a man (M = 6.93, SD = 1.72)-a difference of 0.38.Racial identityWe did not observe a significant difference in EA community satisfaction between respondents identifying as white (M = 7.19, SD = 1.61) compared to non-white (M = 7.24, SD = 1.66).EngagementNot unexpectedly, more engaged respondents reported being more satisfied with the EA ...