Perhaps future surveys should have exhaust valves channeling people's need to express themselves:
1) In any number of words, what is your theory of gender? (essay section)
2) On unsophisticated government forms that only have the options "male" and "female", which do you select? (multiple choice, two options)
3) Sex with people who gave the same answer to 2), yay or boo? (multiple choice, two options)
4) Sex with people who gave a different answer to 2), yay or boo? (multiple choice, two options)
5) In any number of words, what are your political views? (essay section)
6) Which nine of the following ten political terms most poorly describe that position (multiple choice, ten options).
etc.
Another proof that survey design is hard: should I answer "yay male/male sex, I strongly support same-sex " or "boo male/male sex, I am not interested?" Or, taking a page from Alicorn's book, what about those who say "yay male/male sex, I'd like to be interested in men?" (I'd expect this to be a statistically detectable portion of test-takers.)
Also, making people write essays just to throw them away is not a terribly productive use of anyone's time.
The final straw was noticing a comment referring to "the most recent survey I know of" and realizing it was from May 2009. I think it is well past time for another survey, so here is one now.
Click here to take the survey
I've tried to keep the structure of the last survey intact so it will be easy to compare results and see changes over time, but there were a few problems with the last survey that required changes, and a few questions from the last survey that just didn't apply as much anymore (how many people have strong feelings on Three Worlds Collide these days?)
Please try to give serious answers that are easy to process by computer (see the introduction). And please let me know as soon as possible if there are any security problems (people other than me who can access the data) or any absolutely awful questions.
I will probably run the survey for about a month unless new people stop responding well before that. Like the last survey, I'll try to calculate some results myself and release the raw data (minus the people who want to keep theirs private) for anyone else who wants to examine it.
Like the last survey, if you take it and post that you took it here, I will upvote you, and I hope other people will upvote you too.