In general, I want to reduce the number of questions.
I’m gonna suggest 20 questions (should take maybe 2.3 minutes to fill out), which of course is in tension with you wanting to reduce the number of questions. Maybe you could split them out into some extra-optional part of the survey?
I’ve been factor-analyzing hundreds of statements for the purpose of creating a measure of ideology/worldview. I haven’t finished the test yet, but it would still be interesting to include some of the top items for the factors so that the LessWrong data can be observed and compared to my data, once it’s published.
Each item has 5 response options: “Disagree strongly”, “Disagree”, “Neither”, “Agree”, and “Agree strongly”. In total, there are 5 factors, which should be close to independent. Some of the top loading items for each factor are (with “(R)” meaning that it is reverse scored):
Factor 0:
Companies that focus on profit buy up and reduce the wages of companies that try to pay workers more.
The stock market fails to punish powerful people for poor investments because people in power just get the government to bail them out using taxpayer money.
The government has regulations that make financial markets work well and fairly. (R)
The government knows well how to balance costs and benefits. (R)
Factor 1:
Academia has been taken over by a woke culture which suppresses dissent.
Minority groups tend to be biased and favor wokeness over fairness.
You can see from the gender ratios in income and work areas that there’s still tons of sexism around. (R)
Climate science is critically important due to global warming. (R)
Factor 2:
One of the greatest benefits of art is that management can place it in workplaces to set a calming, productive tone.
Brand reputation is the main way consumers know that products are safe and high-quality.
Fashion is a good way to build confidence.
Democratic elections are basically polls about who you trust to lead the country, so democratically elected leaders are considered especially trustworthy.
Factor 3:
Teaching will need to start incorporating AI technology.
Genetically modified organisms will make farming more effective in the future.
AI cannot replace designers as computers lack creativity. (R)
Elon Musk’s project of colonizing Mars is a useless vanity project. (R)
Factor 4:
To save the environment, people should eat seasonal locally grown food instead of importing food from across the world.
Claims that it’s soon the end of the world are always hyperbolic and exaggerated.
It is important that the news is run independent of the government so it can serve as a check on those in power.
This sure seems like a well written set of very politically charged questions. Thank you for stepping into the gap where I sure would not have added anything by myself.
Right now I’m tempted to replace most of section 14: Bonus Politics Questions and replace it with your set here. There’s eleven questions there now, of which the only two I like are “If you are an American, what party are you registered with?” and “How would you describe your level of interest in politics?” Do your twenty work as a set, or do you by chance have a favourite ten?
Context of that last question: if you had clear favourite ten, I could keep the two bonus politics questions I liked and replace the others with your ten, giving us 12 instead of last year’s 11. At ~22 I’d want to make cuts elsewhere to try and keep the length from growing too much.
Do your twenty work as a set, or do you by chance have a favourite ten?
The factors work as a set; they have been selected based on a factor analysis of over 400 statements, to capture things which influence as much of one’s worldview as possible. But this makes the item lists for each factor essentially arbitrary, such that they can be easily substituted or expanded or shortened, without changing the core idea much.
I guess if you want to shorten it by 2x, you could remove the 2nd and the 4th item for factor 0, 1, and 2; and remove the 3rd and the 4th item for factor 2, and remove the 2nd and the 3rd item for factor 4. I wouldn’t recommend this though as the items are usually only 0.4-0.6 correlated with the factors, so to obtain more accurate measurement of the worldview, more items would help. (With 4 items that each have a correlation of 0.5 with the underlying factor, the scales’ correlation with the factor would be 0.76; meanwhile with only 2 items, it would be 0.63.)
I would not like if the question “If you are an American, what party are you registered with?” were one of very few politics questions. It is too country-specific.
I’m gonna suggest 20 questions (should take maybe 2.3 minutes to fill out), which of course is in tension with you wanting to reduce the number of questions. Maybe you could split them out into some extra-optional part of the survey?
I’ve been factor-analyzing hundreds of statements for the purpose of creating a measure of ideology/worldview. I haven’t finished the test yet, but it would still be interesting to include some of the top items for the factors so that the LessWrong data can be observed and compared to my data, once it’s published.
Each item has 5 response options: “Disagree strongly”, “Disagree”, “Neither”, “Agree”, and “Agree strongly”. In total, there are 5 factors, which should be close to independent. Some of the top loading items for each factor are (with “(R)” meaning that it is reverse scored):
Factor 0:
Companies that focus on profit buy up and reduce the wages of companies that try to pay workers more.
The stock market fails to punish powerful people for poor investments because people in power just get the government to bail them out using taxpayer money.
The government has regulations that make financial markets work well and fairly. (R)
The government knows well how to balance costs and benefits. (R)
Factor 1:
Academia has been taken over by a woke culture which suppresses dissent.
Minority groups tend to be biased and favor wokeness over fairness.
You can see from the gender ratios in income and work areas that there’s still tons of sexism around. (R)
Climate science is critically important due to global warming. (R)
Factor 2:
One of the greatest benefits of art is that management can place it in workplaces to set a calming, productive tone.
Brand reputation is the main way consumers know that products are safe and high-quality.
Fashion is a good way to build confidence.
Democratic elections are basically polls about who you trust to lead the country, so democratically elected leaders are considered especially trustworthy.
Factor 3:
Teaching will need to start incorporating AI technology.
Genetically modified organisms will make farming more effective in the future.
AI cannot replace designers as computers lack creativity. (R)
Elon Musk’s project of colonizing Mars is a useless vanity project. (R)
Factor 4:
To save the environment, people should eat seasonal locally grown food instead of importing food from across the world.
Claims that it’s soon the end of the world are always hyperbolic and exaggerated.
It is important that the news is run independent of the government so it can serve as a check on those in power.
The moon landing was faked. (R)
This sure seems like a well written set of very politically charged questions. Thank you for stepping into the gap where I sure would not have added anything by myself.
Right now I’m tempted to replace most of section 14: Bonus Politics Questions and replace it with your set here. There’s eleven questions there now, of which the only two I like are “If you are an American, what party are you registered with?” and “How would you describe your level of interest in politics?” Do your twenty work as a set, or do you by chance have a favourite ten?
Context of that last question: if you had clear favourite ten, I could keep the two bonus politics questions I liked and replace the others with your ten, giving us 12 instead of last year’s 11. At ~22 I’d want to make cuts elsewhere to try and keep the length from growing too much.
The factors work as a set; they have been selected based on a factor analysis of over 400 statements, to capture things which influence as much of one’s worldview as possible. But this makes the item lists for each factor essentially arbitrary, such that they can be easily substituted or expanded or shortened, without changing the core idea much.
I guess if you want to shorten it by 2x, you could remove the 2nd and the 4th item for factor 0, 1, and 2; and remove the 3rd and the 4th item for factor 2, and remove the 2nd and the 3rd item for factor 4. I wouldn’t recommend this though as the items are usually only 0.4-0.6 correlated with the factors, so to obtain more accurate measurement of the worldview, more items would help. (With 4 items that each have a correlation of 0.5 with the underlying factor, the scales’ correlation with the factor would be 0.76; meanwhile with only 2 items, it would be 0.63.)
I would not like if the question “If you are an American, what party are you registered with?” were one of very few politics questions. It is too country-specific.