Post-Workshop Survey Results

"The material was much more rigorous and useful than other settings, and the conversation higher-quality, but that was slightly hamstrung in the end by a sort of failure to arrive at key decision-relevant considerations."

"I was familiar with some of the publicly available versions of the arguments for resolving / reconciling funders' frameworks; the value was the negative result of seeing them being tried and mostly failing. The rating is as much about my view of the decision value to major decision-makers of other workshops / conferences I've attended (which don't even try) as it is about this one."

"I loved having the focal example and the decision-focus it was linked to. That made clear what kinds of comments were helpful."

"This workshop felt really good and collaborative. It was really useful for surfacing what people are thinking about this issue and what's needed next. It's inspired us, in HLI, to do some work on wellbeing weights that we now see is really useful, but had not been a priority."

"I think it was too focused on technicalities of wellbeing measurement for the needs of my current role. It did help me understand what our real cruxes are, but I think it wasn't that focused on them."

"At this point in my career and life (with young children), I attend very few workshops/conferences and aim to attend only those of highest quality. Among that select group, this workshop ranks well. For me, it was valuable to hear the priorities of the effective altruism funders."

"It was a revelation to see that what we are working on is just as relevant for effective altruism judgments."

"Best practices for adjusting due to scale use heterogeneity [became clearer] … Useful to know that Founders Pledge has this in their moral weights."

"There is a mismatch between where academic contention focuses on (scale-use heterogeneity, comparability) and what would shift funding allocation most substantively (linearity, neutral point) — the latter got less airtime seemingly because research was thinner."

"I hadn't appreciated how much effective altruism funders are focused on saving lives and how they view quality of life as a relatively minor consideration."

"I came in thinking 10 WELLBYs = 1 DALY but realized that was probably too low and so 4–7 is a better starting point. This was a good takeaway. Useful to know that Founders Pledge has this in their moral weights. Next is that DALY disability weights vs WELLBY weights are very different and WELLBY weights are plausibly better."

"I revised upwards my assessment of the importance of measuring stated preference marginal rates of substitution among different things people care about, even relative to the measurement of levels of various aspects of well-being … the main issue we should have focused on, in my view, is how, both philosophically and technically, to get conversion factors between disparate aspects of well-being, such as mental health and physical health."

"It made me much more pessimistic about whether effective altruism funders would be interested in the kind of work my collaborators and I are doing."

"It certainly made me develop my attitude towards WELLBY as a useable measurement, and I'll introduce the ideas discussed to the various people I know who are also involved in socioeconomic development research/practice/policy."

"[The workshop] inspired us, in HLI, to do some work on wellbeing weights that we now see is really useful, but had not been a priority. And we're now in discussion to collaborate with Dean Jamison and colleagues who are working on a Lancet report on updating the DALY to better capture non-fatal outcomes."

"I personally recalibrated downwards a bit on the value of workshops and dialogue vs new empirical work, but I'm cautious to over-update since my impression is the Unjournal plans to run more such workshops going forward."

"Something felt a bit off — I think structuring in a more sequential way with the aim to answering specific questions as a group might be better."

"What worked was the modular drop-in workshop structure, seeing the publicly available versions of the arguments for resolving / reconciling funder frameworks being tried and failed, and letting productive discussions overrun schedule. What didn't work, at least to my satisfaction, was discussion not focusing on what I thought would shift funding allocation most substantively (linearity, neutral point) and instead on topics where a lot of academic work had been done."

"Worked well to have a mix of practitioners and academics, focused on well-defined problems."

"Honestly, I think David slightly overengineered the documentation and structure around the workshop. Academic workshops all work effectively the same way for a reason. It would have been easier if there was just one single document that said, briefly: here's why we're here; here's who's going to speak, in what order, and what they're going to speak about."

"It felt a bit disorganized. I wasn't sure what was happening when. More structure is better. More enforced breaks. Hey David! … if there was more clarity on what would be in each session I might have dropped in for just a few, but it was hard to know which they would be in advance."

"I liked the ability to make comments both in the chat and on the documents. In retrospect, I realize I didn't know where was the best place to put in comments."

"AI produced briefings were cool; I referred [to them] before, during, and after. I was a little worried that they might be wrong though and wasn't sure how much it was vetted…"

"Maybe I'm old school, but I don't think lots of extra tools is that helpful."

"It's a bit overwhelming to have links to so many novel tools."

"Joel McGuire's interest in piloting calibration questions in charity M&E seems most concretely actionable."

Research priorities cited:
1. Whether the intervention itself changes scale use
2. More linearity evidence from preference-based methods in LMIC populations

"Good to connect with Matt from FP and see their interest in this. I don't think this is a priority for CG now but if we wanted to look further I know some of the people involved now (HLI, Benjamin et al group, Kaiser)."

"I'd love to explore our team (Benjamin, Cooper, Heffetz, Kimball) working with Effective Altruism organisations on researching the issues raised by this conference to help answer the practical questions Effective Altruism assessments face."

[HLI is] "now in discussion to collaborate with Dean Jamison and colleagues who are working on a Lancet report on updating the DALY to better capture non-fatal outcomes."

"I'd like grantmakers to more proactively supply new pivotal questions to the Unjournal, or refine existing ones, very roughly prioritised by what would most substantively shift funding allocation."

"I loved getting down to brass tacks in a way anchored by the practical questions."

"I'd like grantmakers to more proactively supply new pivotal questions to the Unjournal, or refine existing ones, very roughly prioritised by what would most substantively shift funding allocation."