I feel like question 1 could be tweaked so that it’s harder to put in wrong answers (in this case, not weakly increasing probability estimates). Maybe you could ask for the probabilities that humanity will go extinct in certain ranges of time (e.g. “How likely do you think it is that humanity survives to the year 2100 but goes extinct by 2200?”). Or, to circumvent the condition that the probabilities add to less than 100%, you could condition: “Assuming that humanity survives to the year 2100, how likely do you think it is that humanity then goes extinct by 2200?”
I only make these suggestions because I can imagine someone reading the original questions and thinking “Hmm, yes, it seems pretty likely that we annihilate ourselves by 2100: 40-60%” and then putting down 0-20% for part (e) because it’s so much harder to think of ways to go extinct that take thousands of years.
And I would reverse the order of 6 and 7: “What is your level of education? If you are a college student, what is your area of study?” And if you want people’s past experience to count too, you could ask instead “If you have or are earning a college degree, what is/was your area of study?”
I feel like question 1 could be tweaked so that it’s harder to put in wrong answers (in this case, not weakly increasing probability estimates). Maybe you could ask for the probabilities that humanity will go extinct in certain ranges of time (e.g. “How likely do you think it is that humanity survives to the year 2100 but goes extinct by 2200?”). Or, to circumvent the condition that the probabilities add to less than 100%, you could condition: “Assuming that humanity survives to the year 2100, how likely do you think it is that humanity then goes extinct by 2200?”
I only make these suggestions because I can imagine someone reading the original questions and thinking “Hmm, yes, it seems pretty likely that we annihilate ourselves by 2100: 40-60%” and then putting down 0-20% for part (e) because it’s so much harder to think of ways to go extinct that take thousands of years.
And I would reverse the order of 6 and 7: “What is your level of education? If you are a college student, what is your area of study?” And if you want people’s past experience to count too, you could ask instead “If you have or are earning a college degree, what is/was your area of study?”
I like your suggestion with conditional probabilities. Reversing 6 and 7 is also good.