The first draft of the 2012 Less Wrong Census/Survey is complete (see 2011 here). I will link it below if you promise not to try to take the survey because it's not done yet and this is just an example!
2012 Less Wrong Census/Survey Draft
I want three things from you.
First, please critique this draft. Tell me if any questions are unclear, misleading, offensive, confusing, or stupid. Tell me if the survey is so unbearably long that you would never possibly take it. Tell me if anything needs to be rephrased.
Second, I am willing to include any question you want in the Super Extra Bonus Questions section, as long as it is not offensive, super-long-and-involved, or really dumb. Please post any questions you want there. Please be specific - not "Ask something about abortion" but give the exact question you want me to ask as well as all answer choices.
Try not to add more than five or so questions per person, unless you're sure yours are really interesting. Please also don't add any questions that aren't very easily sort-able by a computer program like SPSS unless you can commit to sorting the answers yourself.
Third, please suggest a decent, quick, and at least somewhat accurate Internet IQ test I can stick in a new section, Unreasonably Long Bonus Questions.
I will probably post the survey to Main and officially open it for responses sometime early next week.
The hispanic ethnicity is not generally considered to be tied to a specific race. In various forms I have seen and completed recently, race and hispanic ethnicity are two separate questions. This is more accurate because it does not exclude/ignore, e.g., black hispanics who may live in or descend from Caribbean or Central American nations.
The question about children should have an option "0, and unsure about having some in the future".
It would help to provide lists of "hard sciences" and "soft sciences" so that people know what they are selecting.
There is a typo in the Liberal answer for the Political question: "moire redistribution of wealth".
Some people may come from families of mixed religious background. This question should have either a multiple-answer option (more accurate) or specify that responders should choose based on some criteria (vague, open to interpretation).
For the IQ tests, two which came up in the comments after the last survey were iqtest.dk and sifter.org/iqtest. My scores on both tests were consistent. In a reply to the previously-linked comment, gwern linked his list of online IQ tests.
ACT scores have already been mentioned as an addition to the SAT scores. I think a category for GRE general scores would also be worthwhile; the GRE has higher resolution than the SAT or ACT at the high tail. Going further on these questions, splitting up the scores into the different subject areas (math/verbal) would be nice. Of course, the GRE scoring system has been recently changed, which would necessitate two possible response areas like the SAT question has now. (There are (questionably) accurate conversions between the different scoring systems which could be used for the survey analysis and comparisons.)
Another question which might be interesting: ask responders to take the AQ test. It's not long, and it provides an inexact but standardized measure which is correlated to Asperger's/high-functioning autism. Probably better than relying on self-diagnoses, which is common.
In the Less Wrong Use question, there is a typo: "but never a top-level psost".
Correct - to be standard, they should be separate questions. Sometimes they are analyzed together on the back end.