--On Thursday, April 11, 2013 20:09 +0000 Yoav Nir <ynir@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > On Apr 11, 2013, at 6:11 PM, Ray Pelletier > <rpelletier@xxxxxxxx> wrote: > >> All >> >> The IETF is concerned about diversity. As good engineers, we >> would like to attempt to measure diversity while working on >> addressing and increasing it. To that end, we are >> considering adding some possibly sensitive questions to the >> registration process, for example, gender. Of course, they >> need not be answered and would be clearly labeled as optional. >... > Seems like I'm in a minority among responders, but I think > it's a bad idea. > > First, what is suggested is not a survey. It's part of the > registration form. This makes it totally non-anonymous. These > sensitive questions are going to be linked to name and >... > Dave Crocker suggested getting an expert. I don't think that > would help. Such an expert would tell you that the questions > you can ask depends on the group you are asking. Questions > that would be acceptable in one country, would be > inappropriate in another. In Israel people are likely to > answer sensitive questions truthfully, while in Germany > concern for privacy might make these questions seem too > personal. So how do you fit such a questionnaire to a, well, > diverse group such as meeting attendants? > > I think skewed surveys are a worse basis for planning policy > than just using common sense (yes, I know that's just another > name for our biases). Surveys lend a scientific aura to data > that is effectively non-representative. I'm a little more optimistic about the right sort of expert than Yoav is, but generally agree with his point of view (so not that small a minority). An additional observation and a suggestion: -- Part of my non-IETF life/history permits me to claim some expertise in survey design and avoiding or compensating for various threats to validity, including some of those to which Dave referred. But I won't touch the sort of stuff you are wanting to ask about -- it is just too sensitive, too subjective, too tied up with national laws, and so on for a rather long list. Yoav and Ted have identified some of the reasons, as have others. -- If you are going to do something like this, I suggest that you include an option on the registration form that, if checked, will branch the registrant off to a separate survey that would be appropriately anonymized (be sure you can explain the method(s) you use to do that to this sometimes-suspicious community). If one cannot easily get to the survey without registering, the IETF and the results are protected from several varieties of nonsense. You will lose a few people who might have participated in an inline survey, but will pick up some who would be reluctant to answer the same questions if they were integral to the registration documents. You may also get better/more reliable answers to possibly-sensitive questions, at least if the questions themselves are well-designed. best, john