73 replies to this topic

[phenom]

Just a quick note.

Today, I received approval from the Human Subjects Committee to conduct the Longevity Attitudes Survey.

Carry on.

Phenom

[Bruce Klein]

Would this HSC be for a specific school or is it a private/public organization?

[David]

Congrats! If at any stage you need any 'elp.......

Dave

[Lazarus Long]

What ever happened to this study and its results?

I see the links to it are now all dead.

Too bad [cry]

[phenom]

Laz, I also sent you a private message on this, but I had to put the study on hold due to lots of other demands. Very coincidentally, I picked the project back up just this week. I'll let everyone know what progress I'm making.

[Bruce Klein]

Thanks for the update, phenom... best of luck.

[phenom]

Hi Everyone!

I thought I'd provide an update on the Longevity Attitude Survey project. I have so far collected 167 fully complete surveys. Preliminary analysis looks pretty interesting. I definitely found some statistically significant relationships which I'll share later in the form of a report. More completed surveys may trickle in at this point but not many.

Once again, if you are an immortalist, transhumanist, etc.... PLease DO NOT take the survey. I'm trying to understand the GENERAL population's attitudes, not you outliers. ;-)

However, if you have any ideas for where I might find some more participants, please let me know.

I do still plan on accessing a special interest group; namely a Yahoo Group of Harley-Davidson Sportster Enthusiasts numbering around 3000 members. I thought it might be interesting to compare the atttitudes of a group or relative risk-takers to that of the general population. There's a place on the survey for people to identify themselves as a group member.

If anyone thinks of another group to solicit for participation, please contact ME rather than soliciting the group yourself. I want to standardize the solicitation process.

Meanwhile, I've collected all the respondent's comments so far on the following web page:

http://www.the-longe...veycomments.htm

In general, I think people found the survey interesting and thought provoking, though there were some criticisms that the questions seem biased. Enjoy!

[John Schloendorn]

Hey Phenom,
good stuff! Though why do you not want us to take the survey when there's a place to identify ourselves as imminst members? We should sure make a good positive control.

What groups have ya got so far?

I also did web experiments, basically on how to advertise immortalism and got heaps of participants from www.socialpsychology.org and http://genpsylab-wexlist.unizh.ch/. These, however, are mostly undergrad psychology students.

If you need anything I'd be happy to share what I learned from that project.

Best wishes, John.

[phenom]

Thanks John,

I've added the rest of the comments from the survey so far at the top of the page. The last group of folks were very religious it seemed. I'll check out your links. Yes, I suppose it would be a good idea to get the data from a group of immortalist/transhumanists just to see how far we differ from the other groups. I'll make it so.

Scott

[John Schloendorn]

Just out of curiosity (and to cite your work): From my results, I calculated a variable to reflect a person's total inclination towards 'immortalism'. I got a frequency distribution that followed roughly an exponential decay, with considerable extremism added at both ends of the scale.
Does that sound familiar at all? Do your results look similar?

[phenom]

Well, the Longevity Attitude Survey produces a Total LAS score, which sounds similar to your measure, and 5 subscale scores, each for the five sections of the survey (Social, Religious, Feasibility, Ethical, and Teleological Issues. The Total LAS ranged from -16 to 16 with 0 being a neutral disposition. The distribution is actually pretty normal with a skewness value of only .028. N = 256 so far. The arithemetic mean so far is 1.98 with a SD of 4.42. Minimum value was -10.0 and maximum value was 12.60. I expect the maximum value to increase and the whole distribution shift to the right when I invite transhumanists, immortalists, cryonicists, extropians, and other groups interested in longevity. The interesting aspect to my study will be (1) the relationships between demographic and personalty factors to LAS and (2) group differences between LAS total and subscale scores. BTW I've added to the comments section and moved them to:

http://scottbadger.c...veycomments.htm

New comments are at the top I'll probably write this up after the Holidays.

[phenom]

John, I forgot to thank you for the links. I am currently online with both of those resources.

Phenom

[John Schloendorn]

Thanks John

John, I forgot to thank you

No worries, you did'nt :-)

Good. I take it the differences between Total LAS and my i-score are owing to the method. A normal around neutral sounds to me like one hell of a favorable result. How did you get 'em to be that positive? I'm looking forward to your publication! Please let me know when you got something.

[mrfesta]

looks like I missed out, is there a copy of this survey anywhere? (all the links here are dead).


except the Political Compass test ; I scored a left sided libertarian.

Anyways, I'm trying to brainstorm some survey/poll questions so if anyone has a copy for ideas they would be appreciated.