this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2023
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Do you think there's anything we can do to make it less loaded? I'd love to improve it to make people more comfortable
That's a great question. You all would have been better served if I offered something helpful, but I don't really feel qualified or knowledgeable enough in sociology and psychology to offer anything meaningful.
Some of us have really struggled with various aspects of our identity all our lives and so I think, if others are anything like me, surveys of this nature are inherently going to stir that. It's okay. It's simply life.
I just imagined something silly actually. I imagined a survey with user inputted responses where one could vote with a previously entered response or make there own. Naturally, there would be multiple responses that are similar but not the same. When the survey closed, the input could then be coalesced via AI into condensed groupings that best represent most folks. This might provide for better choices in the future for demographic info and how to best serve folks.
...erm.
That was certainly not very helpful. I'm just overtired while imagineering. I think I spent too many brain cells today at work.
So, user input responses while they can be great do tend to be a pain to cleanup because even if they meant the same thing, they might've written it differently, might've added other words, might've made typos, many ways this can get messy. I would not give this data to an AI nor trust it to not bullshit things.
I think for the most part - we did manage to cover what most people wanted in the options but we did miss some countries (Kosovo, Taiwan, Chile) because I had to type them manually and I just took a list on Wikipedia to avoid having to a lot of data sanitization, some things that we did not think about like the feeling of exclusion that some trans people had with them not being mentioned, some people had mixed feelings about the clear divide between white vs non-white, some people felt that more than one gender identity / sexual orientation fit them.
I think based on people's issues with this attempt (and future attempts, I imagine), we can refine and make things better for next time. So, if there's any question in particular that felt restricting in any way, please do tell, we'll get closer to perfection even if we can never fully reach it.
If you get ideas later, feel free to DM me too. No need to find the solution now. Take care of yourself.
If the form allows, perhaps a "not listed" option that would then show a follow-up question with a text box where people could suggest additional entries.
You wouldn't have to aggregate all the custom entries if it was too onerous, but if you spotted a pattern/some frequently entered things you could then include them next time.