#130 Demographic Survey 2020 - Fedora Diversity & Inclusion
Closed: moved 3 years ago by jflory7. Opened 3 years ago by nasirhm.

Hey D&I Team, I would like to suggest having another Demographic survey to improve perspective of the Fedora D&I Team on What the Community expects and What new ideas we should generate to engage Diverse Groups into Fedora.

In 2017, we've had a survey too, but i guess the results were never pushed out due to some privacy reasons. This time, How about extracting some questions from the Past survey and remove the ones that are causing the Data Privacy issue.


We can use Google Forms as a Way to get data, as our Primary focus is to collect data. If some volunteer would like to set-up a similar Open Source platform, we would love have it there too. But for now how about extracting the questions and Creating a Google Form

What does the Team think ?

@jflory7

Metadata Update from @jflory7:
- Issue priority set to: needs review (was: awaiting triage)
- Issue tagged with: needs feedback, new change, research, type - metrics, type - outreach

3 years ago

Here are some Open Source survey platforms that we can either host on some Fedora HomeServer & Conduct the survey on : https://opensource.com/article/17/2/tools-online-surveys-polls

A new community survey is an excellent way to help the D&I team prioritize how we can best help the Fedora community. A community survey provides us with necessary and helpful feedback on how to focus our limited time as volunteers. So, I am +1 to a new survey.

We could probably use the original questions from the demographic survey discussed in #12 and #62, and remove questions that ask personally-identifying information. I think this was what caused the last effort for a survey to disappear into the belly of Red Hat Legal. :P

As for tooling, I suggest we use Google Forms unless someone steps up with time, money, and resources to set up a survey-hosting platform for us. We got stuck in that black hole in 2016/2017.

Before the survey questions got lost in RH Legal, we were blocked for months trying to figure out how we would get a survey platform set up and hosted. I doubt asking the Red Hat Community Platform Engineering team to do this for us is an option. I also can't speak for how accessible Free Software survey tools are for issues like motor disabilities and accessibility devices like screen readers. I know Google Forms prioritizes accessibility from my past use of it.

@jflory7 sounds great, It seems like it's a good first issue for new comers to remove the questions regarding the personal details and I think we would be able to go on with the survey,

Google Forms sounds like a Great Idea to make the survey Accessible.

What to other Team Members think ?

I think we should ask Council before putting efforts on a second survey as the first one never rolled out.

I think we should ask Council before putting efforts on a second survey as the first one never rolled out.

@mattdm @riecatnor @bcotton Do you have any legal insight on what kinds of questions we can or cannot ask without getting lost in legal review?

I sent an email to Marie, Ben and Matthew to get their feedback and help regarding this.
I'm +1 to create a new survey - but we should definitely check out what was the problem with the previous survey so we don't repeat the same "problem" again.

I sent an email to Marie, Ben and Matthew to get their feedback and help regarding this.
I'm +1 to create a new survey - but we should definitely check out what was the problem with the previous survey so we don't repeat the same "problem" again.

Thank you for sending the email @jonatoni , Agreed, Knowing what the problem was with the previous survey can indeed help us to not to repeat it again.

Hiya folks, I checked in with @bex on this first. AIUI, this is not why things were specifically stopped, but this is more a take on things moving forward.

  1. Need to come up with a set of questions and have them approved. These should be targeted towards very specific info we want to obtain. We need justification for why we want each piece of data.
  2. Develop a method to administer the survey and secure the data such that it is seen by as few people as possible and has the shortest life possible.
  3. The data can be analyzed for only what we set out to discover. We cannot "fish" around for interesting data after the fact.

Additionally, we need to guard against any form of individual identification -- say there is only one design contributor living in Rochester, NY, (who is it???) and they were to disclose disabilites/sexual orientation, that could be matched easily to them. There is also an interesting quandary here for Fedora contributors who are also Red Hatters. Red Hat may not wish to have some info about their employees for legal reasons. Questions need to be formed in a general sense so we avoid this.

Lastly, although the D&I team would be the ones developing the survey, this will take a substantial chunk of my resources (FCAIC) as I will be the one driving it from a legal/RH internal perspective. Based on that and the availability of RH legal, we can expect it to be a long process.

I think it could be extremely valuable, and I am happy to put this on my list of things. Looking forward to folks thoughts :)

Thanks @riecatnor for sharing info.

I believe this time we should take top-down approach.

Instead of starting drafting questions, we should try to come-up with our specific main objectives and data science methodology which we want to apply on data gathered by survey.

I am not sure if it is possible to have a set of appropriate/pre-approved questions from legals beforehand if we share our objectives with them to make the process become more easier and quick.

Defining the flow of this whole strategy will definitely help us move ahead on the subject.

@nasirhm Hey, thanks for being active in D&I team lately :)
Would you like to share your introduction on our mailing list, if not done yet?
I am sorry, if I missed it.

Thanks,
Amita

@nasirhm Hey, thanks for being active in D&I team lately :)
Would you like to share your introduction on our mailing list, if not done yet?
I am sorry, if I missed it.
Thanks,
Amita

Sorry, I haven't Introduced myself in the D&I Mailing list, Thanks for Reminding =D
Here's my Intro : https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/diversity@lists.fedoraproject.org/thread/XPO6R5C6SBOITSQSEOT4QNBT4WJRRHWU/

Thanks @riecatnor for sharing info.
I believe this time we should take top-down approach.
Instead of starting drafting questions, we should try to come-up with our specific main objectives and data science methodology which we want to apply on data gathered by survey.
I am not sure if it is possible to have a set of appropriate/pre-approved questions from legals beforehand if we share our objectives with them to make the process become more easier and quick.
Defining the flow of this whole strategy will definitely help us move ahead on the subject.

Agreed. We can start with specifying & gaining clarity on the Objectives to perform this survey and then could ask the RH legal. How about starting a discussion on Mailing list about the Objectives ?

From the Demographic Survey has the following objectives:

  • Gather baseline demographics about the contributor community
  • Determine contributor knowledge about project components that ease contribution

These Objectives sounds good, Once we have the input from the team on the Objectives, We're good to derive surver questions from it.
@jflory7 @jonatoni @amsharma @bee2502

In a Discussion with @jflory7 , We need to know what the Community expects from the D&I Team, How about making it an Objective too ?

I am +1 about the following Objectives:

  • Gather baseline demographics about the contributor community
  • Gather information on community expectations from the D&I Team

I am unsure about

  • Determine contributor knowledge about project components that ease contribution

I feel like this is something that CommOps + Join SIG should look into.

Some notes from a recent Mindshare meeting:

<sumantro> one last thing , any specific deadlines on https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_Ambassadors_Revamp_2020#Survey_and_Organize_Findings
<riecatnor> Please initiate that with the D&I team as a ticket
<riecatnor> In fact, we could call that a poll
<riecatnor> A very important point about the survey
<riecatnor> It cannot ask personal identifying information
<riecatnor> so, it can have as many questions about peoples thoughts on ambassadors/outreach/fedora\\ past, present, future
<tg-fedmindshare4> <x​3mboy> We should at least ask about the FAS ID, to prevent spamming in the survey/poll
<riecatnor> x3mboy, I think we need to make an option for anonymity
<riecatnor> people can offer that if desired
<riecatnor> I mean more along the lines of, we can't ask folks country of origin/sexual orientation/race/etc

@jflory7 How're we planning to initiate/gather ideas this Survey ?

I think the Fedora Ambassadors Revamp covers this objective:
* Determine contributor knowledge about project components that ease contribution

For that, I think we should wait for @sumantrom and/or @marianab to open a new ticket for this. Otherwise, if the discussion is partly in this ticket and partly in the new ticket, it might get confusing IMO. We can then decide the questions, platform and other next steps there.

Regarding our other objectives from demographic survey, especially
* Gather information on community expectations from the D&I Team

Do we want to use Fedora Ambassadors survey to ask these questions as well? Or do we keep this on hold for now?

  • Determine contributor knowledge about project components that ease contribution
    For that, I think we should wait for @sumantrom and/or @marianab to open a new ticket for this. Otherwise, if the discussion is partly in this ticket and partly in the new ticket, it might get confusing IMO. We can then decide the questions, platform and other next steps there.

I would like to suggest creating a new ticket for the discussion and point @sumantrom and/or @marianab here when they create the ticket to provide some background context and write a summary/conclusion of this ticket there.

Regarding our other objectives from demographic survey, especially
* Gather information on community expectations from the D&I Team
Do we want to use Fedora Ambassadors survey to ask these questions as well? Or do we keep this on hold for now?

IMO, We wouldn't want the survey to be long (as that's what keeps most people for submitting). On the Ambassadors Revamp Proposal, here most of the fields differ from what we are planning to achieve for the D&I Demographics.

If we can ensure that by combining both the objectives and questions of both the Survey ideas and our survey is not long. We can combine both of them.

If not, I believe we can keep this on hold for now. Once we're done with the Ambassadors Revamp Survey and gain insights about it. We can plan this one as well.

As a note, there is definitely a thing as survey fatigue. I am interested in collaborating with @sumantrom and @marianab, and perhaps when they have created a survey for the Ambassador/Advocate revamp, maybe we can slip some of our old questions in before it gets shared:

https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/diversity-inclusion/demographic-survey/#survey-questions

In the meanwhile, I think we need to get through Flock/Nest and the FWD organizing before the D&I Team can be more proactive on pushing this forward. We have a lot on our plate already! So, I am going to mark this ticket as blocked and will assign it so we remember to follow up when the time is right.

Metadata Update from @jflory7:
- Issue untagged with: needs feedback
- Issue priority set to: waiting on external (was: needs review)
- Issue tagged with: blocked

3 years ago

Metadata Update from @jflory7:
- Issue assigned to marianab

3 years ago

So, after this ticket was opened, two things happened:

I am thinking we close this ticket as moved and collaborate with the Council and Mindshare on surveys. We might be able to slip in a couple of the questions we drafted all those years ago.

Thoughts on closing this ticket as moved?

Metadata Update from @jflory7:
- Issue marked as blocking: #153

3 years ago

Following up on last comment. Closing this ticket as moved, we can redirect follow-up discussion in #153.

Metadata Update from @jflory7:
- Issue close_status updated to: moved
- Issue status updated to: Closed (was: Open)

3 years ago

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