About six months ago I did a survey of the readership of my two Gene Expression blogs (before moving to Discover). The N was around 600. You can view the raw frequency results here. One of the issues which I was curious about: did the disciplinary background of readers have any major correlates with responses? So I created three categories from the data on disciplines:
-Science
-Social Science
-Not Science
Social science had its own section, but for science I amalgamated those who studies Math, Engineering, Natural Science and Medicine. The balance were under “Not science.”
| Not Science | Social Science | Natural Science | |
| How long have been reading Gene Expression(s) regularly? | |||
| No more than 4 weeks | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| 1 to 6 months | 12 | 13 | 14 |
| 6 months to 12 months | 12 | 15 | 13 |
| 1 to 2 years | 20 | 22 | 22 |
| 2 to 4 years | 33 | 26 | 22 |
| More than 4 years | 18 | 19 | 20 |
| What is your highest educational level attained? | |||
| Did not complete secondary school | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Secondary school | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Some post-secondary education, incomplete | 5 | 1 | 1 |
| Post secondary education, but not a university degree holder | 4 | 2 | 1 |
| University degree holder | 38 | 33 | 37 |
| Masters degree | 20 | 22 | 20 |
| Professional graduate degree (law, medicine, etc.) | 20 | 12 | 11 |
| Graduate degree (science, humanities, etc.) | 13 | 29 | 30 |
| What is your subjective socioeconomic status? | |||
| Lower class | 5 | 3 | 3 |
| Lower middle class | 15 | 15 | 9 |
| Middle class | 42 | 43 | 47 |
| Upper middle class | 34 | 31 | 35 |
| Upper class | 4 | 7 | 5 |
| What is your belief about the nature of God? | |||
| I believe in theistic God(s) | 12 | 6 | 11 |
| I believe in deistic God(s) | 8 | 8 | 5 |
| I believe in a Higher Power | 5 | 5 | 6 |
| I am skeptical of the existence of God(s) | 24 | 23 | 22 |
| I do not believe in the existence of God(s) | 51 | 56 | 57 |
| What is your racial identity? | |||
| European ancestry (white) | 75 | 84 | 82 |
| East Asian | 3 | 5 | 2 |
| South Asian | 3 | 1 | 7 |
| Southeast Asian | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| African ancestry (black) | 2 | 2 | 1 |
| Middle Eastern | 2 | 1 | 2 |
| Mixed | 6 | 5 | 4 |
| Other | 9 | 3 | 1 |
| What is your sex? | |||
| Male | 84 | 86 | 87 |
| Female | 15 | 14 | 13 |
| Other | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Which of the following characterizes your general politics: | |||
| Far Left | 5 | 6 | 1 |
| Left | 13 | 15 | 18 |
| Center Left | 16 | 18 | 21 |
| Center | 4 | 5 | 4 |
| Center Right | 9 | 6 | 11 |
| Right | 13 | 16 | 12 |
| Far Right | 3 | 6 | 3 |
| Libertarian | 21 | 22 | 25 |
| Other | 16 | 6 | 3 |
| Do you consider yourself sympathetic to transhumanism? | |||
| No | 22 | 25 | 12 |
| Yes | 32 | 33 | 40 |
| No idea | 29 | 28 | 29 |
| Don’t care | 17 | 14 | 20 |
| Have you ever had sexual intercourse? | |||
| Yes | 88 | 94 | 88 |
| No | 10 | 4 | 11 |
| ? | 2 | 2 | 1 |
| Personality type in terms of shyness you are: | |||
| Very extroverted | 0 | 5 | 2 |
| Extroverted | 7 | 12 | 6 |
| Somewhat extroverted | 20 | 21 | 18 |
| Somewhat introverted | 38 | 36 | 41 |
| Introverted | 28 | 26 | 25 |
| Very Introverted | 6 | 5 | 8 |
| Attitudes toward abortion: | |||
| Support abortion rights on demand | 41 | 41 | 44 |
| Support abortion rights, but with some constraints | 39 | 39 | 41 |
| Support ban on abortion, but with some exceptions | 14 | 15 | 5 |
| Support ban on abortion | 6 | 5 | 10 |
| Have you taken calculus? | |||
| Yes | 73 | 81 | 97 |
| No | 27 | 19 | 3 |
| Race is: | |||
| A social construct, not a biological reality | 10 | 11 | 10 |
| A biological reality, not a social construct | 17 | 18 | 18 |
| Both a social construct and a biological reality | 74 | 71 | 72 |
| IQ measures: | |||
| Something real which we refer to as intelligence | 61 | 63 | 58 |
| Ability to take a particular type of test | 18 | 18 | 27 |
| Who knows? | 21 | 20 | 15 |
| What is the heritability of IQ among groups in the West which are middle class and above? | |||
| Less than 0.3 | 6 | 3 | 4 |
| 0.3 to 0.5 | 20 | 21 | 22 |
| 0.5 to 0.7 | 44 | 54 | 43 |
| More than 0.7 | 29 | 21 | 31 |
Turns out there’s no big difference, except for in calculus. A particular type of person must be attracted to the substance and style of this weblog (I suspect the biggest substantive difference between the readership and myself is that I’m on the extroverted side). I’ll probably post a survey for tomorrow, mostly to see how much Discover has changed my readership. But periodically I’ll also look at the results for previous surveys like this.
Note: Some of the results do not add to 100% because I rounded.