Asking questions about race and/or gender can be a very sensitive issue and a lot of people would refuse to complete those sections, or may even refuse to complete the survey at all if such questions were included - for a variety of very valid reasons.
Sean On Oct 14, 2014, at 9:23 PM, Zack Maril <thewitzb...@gmail.com> wrote: > ClojureBridge and conj grants are excellent ways to encourage all types of > folks to join Clojure and I'm stoked that these programs have emerged from > the community. These are Good Things and should be continued and improved > upon wherever possible. I'd personally like to know how much good these > efforts do and tracking demographics of the Clojure community, whether it is > through the State of Clojure survey or other means, would allow us to measure > the distance between our ideals and reality. I'm proud of the attempts and > efforts undertaken to increase diversity within the community and, beyond the > specifics of this current conversation, I'm confident that Clojure will make > strides towards a more diverse user base. > > For the issue at hand, I believe that by including demographics within the > State of the Clojure survey the Clojure leadership would be making a strong > statement indicating their desire for a more desire community. The survey > measures that which has been deemed important to know and understand in terms > of the stewardship and development of Clojure. Including demographic > questions in the survey, along with the context of why they were included, > would indicate that there is a strong desire to understand and improve the > diversity of the community by those who lead the community. Inclusion of such > questions on the survey would be another opportunity for Clojure to be more > than just not unwelcoming to atypical folks and allow us to purposefully > invite more people to this relative paradise we inhabit. For a relatively > small effort* it would show atypical folks that we care to know that they > exist in the context of Clojure usage and that we are interested in > understanding and improving their situation. > -Zack > > *If I've misgauged the difficultly of adding such questions to the survey, > please say so. My impression is that this would be straightforward > technologically and, by perhaps copying questions from similar surveys, > straightforward in terms of survey design. I don't mean to ask you to drop > everything and try to solve all the problems of sexism all at once but only > to do something which seems, from an outside perspective, fairly economical > with low costs and high benefits.
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