In march 2010 WP had 12% and now its on 9%? Am I right
or I'm missing
something? :\
The percentage isn't necessarily going down. The two percentages were
found through surveys with pretty different methodologies. I think the
most recent survey was intended to be "more scientific" in how it was
executed, hopefully giving a more accurate snapshot and more specific
numbers. So, pretty much, it's most likely been between 9% and 12% all
along, we're just getting an either more accurate number or just a
different amount of woman participated -- it doesn't mean that we're
doing worse and are losing women we already had.
To add to what Casey said in an earlier email, the methodology that we used for
conducting the two surveys is slightly different and we can attribute the variability in
gender count to it. The recent survey was only shown to those who have an account on
Wikipedia, and were logged in during the one week when the survey was in field. In
addition, to avoid the data being skewed towards more frequent editors, we showed the
banner only once. This ensured that we had a higher probability of participation from
editors rather than readers and the sample did not skew towards more frequent editors, and
I feel that this could account for variability in the data.
Mani
--
Mani Pande, PhD
Head of Global Development Research
Wikimedia Foundation
415-882-7981 ext 6721
Twitter: manipande
Skype: manipande