Ranges would work. 1000+ should be high enough for the top category; on last year’s survey only 9% of respondents (80 people) were in that range. On CFAR surveys we’ve used:
I don’t have a Less Wrong account zero or less 1-99 100-999 1000 or more
Finer categories might be useful and shouldn’t compromise anonymity too much, especially at the low end. This breakdown looks OK to me:
no karma score mentioned (341),
0 or less (144),
1-4 (39),
5-9 (27),
10-19 (38),
20-29 (29),
30-49 (40),
50-99 (52),
100-199 (45),
200-299 (27),
300-499 (30),
500-999 (38),
1000-1999 (37) and
2000+ (43).
Numbers in brackets are the number of responses in each category on the 2011 survey. Note that another survey now would get even more responses in most categories.
(Personally I’m OK with Yvain’s laissez-faire approach of letting people round karma scores themselves to the degree they want. But I can see why using discrete categories to enforce privacy might be more robust.)
[Edited after army1987 posted his comment to clarify the bracketed numbers.]
That looks great, but I’d split the top range into two (because I don’t feel that comfortable in being lumped with EY et al.) and 50-99 and 100-199 (for consistency, so none gets >40 respondents in the last survey).
That’s way too coarse IMO. I’d prefer having a write-in answer field but suggesting people to round it to one or two significant figures (depending on how concerned they are about their privacy), and maybe accepting the answer “> 5000”.
Ranges would work. 1000+ should be high enough for the top category; on last year’s survey only 9% of respondents (80 people) were in that range. On CFAR surveys we’ve used:
I don’t have a Less Wrong account
zero or less
1-99
100-999
1000 or more
Finer categories might be useful and shouldn’t compromise anonymity too much, especially at the low end. This breakdown looks OK to me: no karma score mentioned (341), 0 or less (144), 1-4 (39), 5-9 (27), 10-19 (38), 20-29 (29), 30-49 (40), 50-99 (52), 100-199 (45), 200-299 (27), 300-499 (30), 500-999 (38), 1000-1999 (37) and 2000+ (43). Numbers in brackets are the number of responses in each category on the 2011 survey. Note that another survey now would get even more responses in most categories.
(Personally I’m OK with Yvain’s laissez-faire approach of letting people round karma scores themselves to the degree they want. But I can see why using discrete categories to enforce privacy might be more robust.)
[Edited after army1987 posted his comment to clarify the bracketed numbers.]
That looks great, but I’d split the top range into two (because I don’t feel that comfortable in being lumped with EY et al.) and 50-99 and 100-199 (for consistency, so none gets >40 respondents in the last survey).
That’s way too coarse IMO. I’d prefer having a write-in answer field but suggesting people to round it to one or two significant figures (depending on how concerned they are about their privacy), and maybe accepting the answer “> 5000”.