It’s day 3 of the survey, and another busy day in my own life, so I feel a bit like I’ve not been able to engage as much with promotion of the survey compared to previous years - but it doesn’t matter because we are way ahead compared to previous years anyway!
Here’s a graph to demonstrate:
That solid red line is this year’s participation. Last year we reached 22,000 sometime during day 5 and we’re only in day 3. Pretty cool. And there’s still 28 days left. (You can see this graph on the public spreadsheet here.)
This year is also notable in the referral department, because it’s the first time that anything has overtaken Twitter to second place. I’m not even on Discord! You all rule, thank you for getting the word out!
Today is notable in the geography department, because it’s the first year that we’ve asked for specific country of residence beyond “UK/not UK”. Here’s the top 5 currently:
United States - 12,766 (57.9%)
United Kingdom - 2,423 (11.0%)
Currently 118 countries are represented. Hi everyone! :D
About 14% of participants are aged 31 or over at the moment, which is a little higher than last year. Those of you who have been following for a while will know that it’s an ongoing mission of mine to get as many age groups as possible represented in the survey, especially since the internet and social media and Tumblr-and-Discord tend to skew younger. So I’m really pleased to see things moving in that direction, and hopefully this will continue for the rest of the open survey time. The mailing list has gotten a lot longer since last year and that’s one of the key ways that older participants tend to find out about the survey, so that might have contributed - I need to do some more spreadsheet formulas to find out more.
In addition to taking part in the survey yourself, anything you’re up for doing to spread the word is incredibly helpful! In particular, sharing the survey link (survey.gendercensus.com) in places online and offline where people of many different age groups hang out. According to data from past years, Facebook is particularly good for that, especially local LGBT+ groups. In previous years Facebook has been in the top 3 referrers, but this year it has fallen all the way down to 10th place, which feels very strange. It has always been so reliable. I want to write a clickbaity headline about it, like: “Are Gen Z Killing Facebook?”
Anyway, the past few days have been exhausting, so I’ll sign off here and try to get some sleep. We’ve got an intense heatwave approaching here in the UK and I’m pretty nervous about it, but I know it’s probably best to try and be rested when it kicks off. I’m not great with heat but it should hopefully give me plenty of restful time indoors to work on gender census things at the start of next week.
Take care folks, make sure you’re getting your electrolytes and drinking plenty of water, and I hope to check in tomorrow!
[ Take the 2022 Gender Census survey here ]