EA - EA Survey 2022: How People Get Involved in EA 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: How People Get Involved in EA, published by WillemSleegers on July 21, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.SummaryPersonal contact (22.6%), 80,000 Hours (13.5%), and a book, article, or blog post (13.1%) are the most common sources where respondents first hear about EA.80,000 Hours, local or university EA groups, personal contacts, and podcasts have become more common as sources of where respondents first encounter EA.Facebook, Giving What We Can, LessWrong, Slate Star Codex / Astral Codex Ten, The Life You Can Save, and GiveWell have become less common.Respondents whose gender selection was 'woman', 'non-binary', or 'prefer to self-describe', were much more likely to have first heard of EA via a personal contact (30.2%) compared to respondents whose gender selection was 'man' (18.4%).80,000 Hours (58.0%), personal contact with EAs (44.0%), and EA groups (36.8%) are the most common factors important for getting involved in EA.80,000 Hours, EA Groups, and EAGx have been increasing in importance over the last years.EA Global, personal contact with EAs, and the online EA community saw a noticeable increase in importance for helping EAs get involved between 2020 and 2022.Personal contact with EAs, EA groups, the online EA community, EA Global, and EAGx stand out as being particularly important among highly engaged respondents for getting involved.Respondents who identified as non-white, as well as women, non-binary, and respondents who preferred to self-describe, were generally more likely to select factors involving social contact with EAs (e.g., EA group, EAGx) as important.Where do people first hear about EA?Personal contacts continue to be the most common place where people first hear about EA (22.6%), followed by 80,000 Hours (13.5%) and a book, article, or blog post (13.1%).Comparison across all yearsThe plot below shows changes in where people report first hearing of EA across time (since we ran the first EA Survey in 2014).We generally observe that the following routes into EA have been increasing in importance over time:80,000 HoursLocal or university EA groupsPersonal contactsPodcastsAnd the following sources have been decreasing in importance:FacebookGiving What We CanLessWrongSlate Star Codex / Astral Codex TenThe Life You Can SaveGiveWellComparison across cohortsSeveral of the patterns observed in the previous section are also observed when we look at where different cohorts of EA respondents first encountered EA. We see that more recent cohorts are more likely to have encountered EA via 80,000 Hours and podcasts, and are less likely to have encountered EA via Giving What We Can, LessWrong, and GiveWell. No clear cohort effects were observed for other sources. Note that the figure below omits categories with few observations (e.g., EA Global, EAGx).Further DetailsWe asked respondents to provide further details about their responses, and provide a breakdown for some of the larger categories. Details of other categories are available on request.80,000 HoursThe largest number of respondents who first heard of EA through 80,000 Hours reported doing so through an independent search, e.g., they were searching online for "ethical careers" and found 80,000 Hours. The second largest category was via the website (which is potentially closely related, i.e., contact with the website resulting from independent search).Relatively much smaller proportions mentioned reaching 80,000 Hours through other categories, including more active outreach (e.g., advertisements).Books, articles, and blogsA book was cited as the most common source of encountering EA when considering the category of books, articles, and blogs.BooksBooks by Peter Singer were by far the most frequently cited books, followed by Doing Good Better by Willia...