The big 2011 survey is pretty much like the census of LW. It runs for about a month, posted on the main page, and is one of those “Everyone who even looks at this site, please answer this survey” type deals. As far as I know only 2 have been done in the history of LW.
I would not at all expect 1000 people to answer this poll. I did a quick search for “poll” here to see how many results other polls returned. The first three that I could easily find results for: one was in the 70s, one was in the 80s, and one was in the 110s. Each of those ran for longer than a day.
Conversely, the poll that I posted has only run for a day, and has garnered 102 responses. For this reason (because 102 responses in one day compares favorably to the other Discussion polls I saw), I believe that the high percentage of female responses (currently 19% of poll respondents are women) is due to MORE women responding, NOT due to LESS men responding.
This survey is (basically) a subset of the census, and there are ~100 female responders to that one. So, unless there is a big surge of female responses to this survey, the results you described here are likely to be more representative/reliable (since absolute numbers, not relative numbers, are important).
However, I think this post is still useful for the discussion it has generated.
Although, that said, the breakdown of the referred-by-friend category (into platonic vs. romantic) could be interesting. I predict that more women than men will be referred by a date, given at least 85% of the LW population is attracted to women, but at most 20% are attracted to men. I would lean towards more romantic then platonic referrals for both genders, but most people have more platonic friends than romantic ones (only 13% of LW is definitely polyamorous), so I’m not sure.
The big 2011 survey is pretty much like the census of LW. It runs for about a month, posted on the main page, and is one of those “Everyone who even looks at this site, please answer this survey” type deals. As far as I know only 2 have been done in the history of LW.
I would not at all expect 1000 people to answer this poll. I did a quick search for “poll” here to see how many results other polls returned. The first three that I could easily find results for: one was in the 70s, one was in the 80s, and one was in the 110s. Each of those ran for longer than a day.
Conversely, the poll that I posted has only run for a day, and has garnered 102 responses. For this reason (because 102 responses in one day compares favorably to the other Discussion polls I saw), I believe that the high percentage of female responses (currently 19% of poll respondents are women) is due to MORE women responding, NOT due to LESS men responding.
This survey is (basically) a subset of the census, and there are ~100 female responders to that one. So, unless there is a big surge of female responses to this survey, the results you described here are likely to be more representative/reliable (since absolute numbers, not relative numbers, are important).
However, I think this post is still useful for the discussion it has generated.
Although, that said, the breakdown of the referred-by-friend category (into platonic vs. romantic) could be interesting. I predict that more women than men will be referred by a date, given at least 85% of the LW population is attracted to women, but at most 20% are attracted to men. I would lean towards more romantic then platonic referrals for both genders, but most people have more platonic friends than romantic ones (only 13% of LW is definitely polyamorous), so I’m not sure.