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Discussion on: Testing the influence of the gender parameter in the State of JS 2021 survey

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Sacha Greif

I'm the lead survey maintainer.This is very interesting, thanks for doing this analysis! But I think there's actually two related issues here:

1) Are different genders correlated with different responses?
2) Are men over-represented in the survey?

I think you've proven that 1) is true, although as you say it's probably due to differing levels of experience, and not gender itself. Correlation vs causation, etc.

As for 2), I think it's quite probable that it's also true, but the difficulty is defining "over-represented compared to what?".

While I think 1) is not really something to worry about or try to "fix", 2) definitely is. Even if we can't quantify the bias because we don't have a good reference or goal to strive towards, we can always make efforts to increase diversity and inclusivity and hope to see improvements from year to year.