The hottest Surveys Substack posts right now

And their main takeaways
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Top Technology Topics

The biggest kink dataset is now easy to explore!

Knowingless • 1836 implied HN points • 26 Feb 26
🎭️ Culture Surveys
  1. An interactive site lets you explore a massive fetish survey of about 960,000 people and ~900 questions by picking x/y axes, filtering by demographics, and choosing weighted or unweighted views.
  2. The site includes a search, a question generator, tools to show random or statistically significant correlations, and a summary that displays exact survey wording, with some chart types still being improved.
  3. Early explorations already surface notable patterns—age-linked trends, apparent gender confounds in reported partner counts, low neuroticism predicting enjoyment of sex work, and subs reporting more interest in violent porn—so it can help people find new, testable correlations.

Here's my Big Kink Survey dataset, raw

Knowingless • 1364 implied HN points • 12 Feb 26
🎭️ Culture Surveys
  1. A very large fetish-survey dataset (about 970,000 responses) has been released along with metadata and survey structure so others can explore and analyze it.
  2. The public release was heavily anonymized and downsampled into a representative subset: many demographic fields were binned or removed and multiple layers of noise were added, so correlations remain but are generally reduced by roughly 15–30%.
  3. The sample is limited to ages 14–32 from Western countries, some extreme fetish items were removed, and there may still be occasional cleaning errors, so verify any surprising findings before drawing strong conclusions.

Sex Workers Are Built Different (graph dump)

Knowingless • 1053 implied HN points • 08 Feb 26
🎭️ Culture Surveys
  1. People who do sex work generally rate their experience as slightly positive, and those with more experience or who do it as a career report much more positive views.
  2. Satisfaction varies by sex work subtype: porn performers reported the highest ratings, full-service workers the lowest, and non-full-service in-person roles (like dominatrix or massage parlor work) fall in between.
  3. Sex workers differ from non-sex-workers on demographics and background — they tend to be more liberal and slightly older, report higher rates of childhood abuse, and show some health differences (like higher BMI) that are concentrated among those with worse childhoods.

ACX Survey Results 2025

Astral Codex Ten • 14591 implied HN points • 29 Jan 25
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Surveys
  1. The survey showed that people's attitudes about Donald Trump have changed positively, with his favorability ratings increasing over time.
  2. About 4.5% of participants reported experiencing Long COVID, and while new cases are appearing, many seem to improve over time.
  3. Most respondents prefer older architecture over modern styles, and they tend to support softer approaches to punishment for minor crimes like shoplifting.

"Paycheck-to-paycheck" and five other popular myths

Noahpinion • 17000 implied HN points • 02 Dec 24
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Surveys
  1. Many popular economic claims, like '60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck,' are often incorrect and based on unreliable sources.
  2. Surveys from trusted government institutions show that a majority of people actually have enough savings to cover three months of expenses, contradicting the paycheck-to-paycheck myth.
  3. There are many other myths about exercise, education, immigration, and spending that are widely accepted but lack proper evidence, showing that misinformation can spread even in an information-rich society.
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Daily Poll Update - October 2, 2020

COVID Reason • 118 implied HN points • 02 Oct 24
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Surveys
  1. The daily updates will share the latest averages for polls leading up to the election. This will help people understand the current landscape of voter opinions.
  2. Currently, the national poll shows Harris leading Trump by a small margin. It's close, so every vote will really count.
  3. The updates will continue consistently over the next 30 days as the election approaches. It's a crucial time for voters to stay informed.

Indulge Your Internet Addiction By Reading About Internet Addiction

Astral Codex Ten • 11769 implied HN points • 06 Dec 24
🎭️ Culture Surveys
  1. Many people consider themselves addicted to the internet, and the more time they spend online, the more likely they are to perceive their usage as an addiction. On average, self-reported addicts spend more time online each day.
  2. There is a negative link between internet addiction and life satisfaction. Those who consider themselves more addicted tend to report lower happiness levels.
  3. Parents who restrict their children's internet use when they are young may help reduce the chance of their kids becoming internet addicts as adults. This suggests that early internet habits can influence future behaviors.

Take The 2025 ACX Survey

Astral Codex Ten • 7157 implied HN points • 20 Dec 24
🚌 Education Surveys
  1. There's a reader survey available that helps understand who reads the blog and explore psychological findings. It's like a fun way to learn more about people's interests.
  2. Taking the survey will take around 20 to 30 minutes, and participants have a chance to win a free one-year subscription. It's a nice incentive to get more people involved.
  3. The survey closes on January 5, so it's important to fill it out before then to make your voice heard.

People Are Delusional About How Hot They Are

Knowingless • 4321 implied HN points • 21 Jan 25
🎭️ Culture Surveys
  1. Most people don't see themselves as they really are when it comes to looks. They tend to think they are hotter than others see them.
  2. Women and men rate themselves similarly, but men are generally more off about how attractive they really are.
  3. When comparing looks to others, people are a bit more accurate when looking at their same gender rather than the opposite gender.

Open Thread 361

Astral Codex Ten • 4336 implied HN points • 23 Dec 24
🎭️ Culture Surveys
  1. You can share or discuss anything you like in the open thread. It's a space to ask questions and engage with others.
  2. There’s a survey for the community that you can fill out. The deadline is January 5, and reminders will keep coming until then.
  3. Happy holidays! Expect fewer posts until January, as the posting schedule will be lighter during this time.

Claude found me an error in the ANES

Never Met a Science • 72 implied HN points • 03 Feb 26
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Surveys
  1. An AI code assistant detected a subtle data error in a major survey where one variable was overwritten, preventing a misleading analysis result.
  2. AI tools are highly useful for routine data processing and quality control, catching problems automatically that researchers might otherwise miss.
  3. AI works best when given specific, domain-relevant examples or code, because vague checks can produce false positives or flag legitimate, documented values as errors.

ICE is not the Lizardman

a newsletter for infovores. • 91 implied HN points • 26 Jan 26
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Surveys
  1. Don’t automatically write off odd poll responses as random bad-faith answers; surprising percentages can represent real opinions that matter politically.
  2. Nontrivial shares of people—even inside expected groups—can hold hawkish or conspiratorial views, so small percentages can still equal large, consequential numbers.
  3. Before dismissing a result, check the question wording, pollster credibility, timing, survey method, and whether other sources corroborate it to judge if it’s noise or a real signal.

Don't update too much on money-happiness correlations

inexactscience • 79 implied HN points • 30 Jul 24
💰 Finance Surveys
  1. Money doesn't always equal happiness. Many studies show mixed results, suggesting other factors play a big role.
  2. People have different values around work and leisure. This means that income may not always reflect happiness for everyone.
  3. Surveys on money and happiness can be tricky. The way they ask questions may not capture the real relationship between income and how people feel.

Defining Interpersonal Trust

Heterodox STEM • 71 implied HN points • 11 Dec 25
🔬 Science Surveys
  1. Leading researchers treat the World Values Survey question “most people can be trusted” as a measure of interpersonal trust, not just trust in people you personally know.
  2. Factor analyses show that this question loads with trust in strangers rather than with trust in friends and family, so it captures a generalized form of interpersonal trust toward unfamiliar people.
  3. As a result, mainstream social-science studies use that survey item to measure interpersonal trust in research on social capital and economic growth, contradicting narrower definitions that limit interpersonal trust to known individuals.

High hopes

Klement on Investing • 4 implied HN points • 26 Feb 26
💼 Business Surveys
  1. Most companies now use AI—about two-thirds—but actual use is light (roughly 1.5 hours per week for many) and adoption is rising rapidly.
  2. Measured productivity gains so far are tiny (around 0.3% over the last three years), yet firms expect much larger gains soon (about 1.4% over the next three years), revealing a big gap between past results and future hopes.
  3. Employers and employees disagree on jobs: employees often expect AI to create jobs, while employers report little past impact but anticipate modest job cuts ahead, especially in the US and UK.

Are Trump Voters Misinformed, Or Were Harris Voters Just Not Given A Chance To Be Misinformed?

Singal-Minded • 1147 implied HN points • 11 Nov 24
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Surveys
  1. Some surveys might show that Trump voters are more misinformed than Harris voters, but this could be due to bias in the questions asked.
  2. Americans often answer political questions based on feelings or general ideas rather than specific facts, so misinformation can come from both sides.
  3. The way questions are framed can lead to results that unfairly label one group as less informed than the other, proving we need balanced questions for fair evaluation.

Improving Retention with Audience Surveys

Growth Croissant • 452 implied HN points • 12 May 23
💼 Business Surveys
  1. Improving retention by solving the customer's problem in a deeper way can have a noticeable impact on retention.
  2. Focus on your core audience for a 10x improvement in solving their problem, even if it means neglecting parts of your audience for better problem-solving.
  3. Running surveys, especially cancel surveys, can provide valuable feedback to enhance your product, understand audience needs, and improve retention.

Do young left-liberal women favour security over freedom?

The Path Not Taken • 176 implied HN points • 14 Jul 25
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Surveys
  1. Young left-liberal women tend to prefer security over freedom compared to their male counterparts. This preference could change the usual ideas within left-liberal beliefs.
  2. On issues like civil liberties and safety, young left-liberal women often show more support for restrictions than young men. Their views can sometimes reflect a stronger desire for protection, especially for vulnerable groups.
  3. Changes in women's values and roles in society may slowly reshape left-liberal ideologies. Over time, this could lead to significant shifts in how these beliefs are understood and applied.

I don't think SlateStarCodex readers have an average IQ of 137

Unconfusion • 199 implied HN points • 02 Dec 23
🎭️ Culture Surveys
  1. Self-reported IQ scores can be unreliable because people often round their answers or inflate their scores. This makes it hard to trust such numbers.
  2. The average IQ of a specific group can be misleading; just because a group attracts certain types of readers doesn't mean their average IQ is much higher than the general population.
  3. For groups to have a truly high average IQ, there usually need to be barriers or specific conditions in place, like competitive environments or rigorous selection processes.

Two quick questions for my paid subscribers

Simon Owens's Media Newsletter • 99 implied HN points • 28 May 25
🎭️ Culture Surveys
  1. It's important to get feedback from your audience to improve your content. Asking questions helps understand what people like or want more of.
  2. Checking in with subscribers can keep them engaged and show that you care about their opinions. This builds a stronger connection with your audience.
  3. Offering a way for paid subscribers to share their thoughts can provide valuable insights. It helps creators tailor their work to better meet the needs of their supporters.

The Forthcoming Future: MIT Students and Desired Number of Children

Heterodox STEM • 78 implied HN points • 19 Jan 25
🚌 Education Surveys
  1. MIT students on average want around two children. The desire varies across different demographics and can be influenced by factors like gender and relationship status.
  2. Women at MIT generally desire fewer children, with many expressing concerns about balancing family and career. In contrast, men tend to prefer slightly larger families.
  3. Religious beliefs can affect how many children students want, with religious individuals generally preferring more children than those who identify as non-religious.

Lawler: Revisions Almost Eliminate Household/Establishment Survey Employment Growth Gap

CalculatedRisk Newsletter • 23 implied HN points • 07 Feb 25
💰 Finance Surveys
  1. The Household Survey and Establishment Survey both track employment, but there was a significant gap in their growth estimates over the years. Recent updates have nearly closed this gap.
  2. New population estimates showed that previous estimates of employment growth were too low, mainly due to underestimating international migration. This has led to a big revision upward in the Household Survey employment numbers.
  3. Now, both surveys show similar employment growth trends, which suggests that the labor market may not be as weak as previously thought.