Aside from one sensitive question, there’s no option to keep your answers private, since in my opinion that would defeat the point
I don’t understand. What exact point would be defeated by not making people’s individual answers public?
It seems to me that that the main effect of your policy will be to introduce a significant selection bias for people who expect general public approval of their views.
It seems to me that that the main effect of your policy will be to introduce a significant selection bias for people who expect general public approval of their views.
More generally, there will be a selection effect for people who want their public persona to include the political views that they express. (Pubic approval is not the only motivation for doing that. Sometimes people seek the sense of solidarity with their co-ideologues that comes from enduring public disapproval.) Plausibly, a large factor determining one’s ideological views is the public persona that one wants to craft, for whatever social-status based reasons. Which public personae are most commonly sought by LW users is an interesting question, so I see this selection effect as a feature, not a bug.
ETA: This comment turns out to be irrelevant. I had understood the OP to be saying that our identities would be published with the results, but I was mistaken.
I don’t see how the survey is tied to our LW username. I think he just means that he will publish the whole of the data. Yvain’s survey didn’t even include usernames, it just had karma that might identify specific users. This survey doesn’t even have karma.
Hm, now I see that’s indeed the case. But then what exactly do you mean by “no option to keep your answers private”? Only that each individual’s whole set of answers will be published as a row in a spreadsheet, thus making it possible to guess who the respondent might be for outliers?
I don’t understand. What exact point would be defeated by not making people’s individual answers public?
It seems to me that that the main effect of your policy will be to introduce a significant selection bias for people who expect general public approval of their views.
More generally, there will be a selection effect for people who want their public persona to include the political views that they express. (Pubic approval is not the only motivation for doing that. Sometimes people seek the sense of solidarity with their co-ideologues that comes from enduring public disapproval.) Plausibly, a large factor determining one’s ideological views is the public persona that one wants to craft, for whatever social-status based reasons. Which public personae are most commonly sought by LW users is an interesting question, so I see this selection effect as a feature, not a bug.
ETA: This comment turns out to be irrelevant. I had understood the OP to be saying that our identities would be published with the results, but I was mistaken.
I don’t see how the survey is tied to our LW username. I think he just means that he will publish the whole of the data. Yvain’s survey didn’t even include usernames, it just had karma that might identify specific users. This survey doesn’t even have karma.
This is correct; I have no intention of publishing usernames, nor could I, had I such an intent.
Hm, now I see that’s indeed the case. But then what exactly do you mean by “no option to keep your answers private”? Only that each individual’s whole set of answers will be published as a row in a spreadsheet, thus making it possible to guess who the respondent might be for outliers?