[Events] Crafting an exit survey for campus events (Asheesh Laroia)

[Asheesh Laroia]

Excerpts from Gregg Lind's message of Mon Apr 16 11:57:57 -0400 2012:
> Lukas ++
> 
> This survey is one of many interactions that people have with the tech
> community.  Seeing one that explicitly affirms my right to
> self-determination is a welcome change, and part of the overall
> message these events are designed to send.

I'll make it a textbox in this version! Thanks for the encouragement
on this topic.

I do have concerns that people filling it out are less likely to actually 
answer a text-field question, which would be a drag for down-the-road 
stats, and I'll be left making guesses at their gender based on appearances 
that I visually recall from the event, or from the person's name, if I want 
to give everyone a value in this field for the purposes of tracking changes 
in attendance ratios, etc.

Along those lines, I think I'd prefer something like this:

"What is your gender, if you're willing to share?"

( ) Male
( ) Female
( ) __________ (empty text field)

My theory is that people are more likely to answer the question if the 
options are right in front of them, and that anyone with a different answer 
can share it in the text area version. The downside is that this might be 
perceived as dismissive of people who opt for the fill-it-in-yourself 
option. Lukas, Venkatesh, Gregg, I'd be curious what you think of the above 
proposal. I actually can't figure out how to make that happen in the Google 
Spreadsheets form tool I'm using, but I'm quite happy to use a different, 
more-flexible tool in the future.

It's an untested theory -- if response rates are high enough with the 
plain-old textbox, I'll stop worrying about this! Otherwise, I might like 
to try some alterantives to see if they result in higher response rates.

To emphasize: the reason I'm so interested in people answering this question 
is that one of the long-standing injustices in free, open source software 
communities is the under-representation of people who aren't cisgendered 
men. We have a goal that these events address this problem through 
effective outreach that brings a diverse set of attendees and treats them 
with respect. I'd like to be able to measure that so I know that we're on 
the right track, and if we're not on the right track, adjust. Changes that 
decrease our ability to self-measure actually run the risk of lowering the 
diversity impact the workshops have.

(Also: to those not used to the jargon, "cisgendered" is a pretty 
straightforward term and can be read-about e.g. here: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisgender )

Again, thanks for pushing this toward the goal of equitable treatment and 
respect for all!

-- Asheesh