Benjamin Leinwand, NYC Metro Chapter Vice President
As statisticians, we observe processes and their outcomes and leverage information from the past to predict what might happen in the future. However, there are sometimes discontinuities where one regime begins and another ends. At an individual level, you can think about how your routines can drastically change when you move, or if you get a new job. Predictions that only account for the earlier setting are inherently unreliable, as one should no longer expect the future to resemble the past. The COVID-19 pandemic provided an unusually collective shift to a ‘new normal’—or rather, a variety of new normals.
Among other changes, our approaches to socializing and community building have been severely affected by society-scale shocks. Many regularly held events and gatherings were put on hiatus due to lockdowns and never revived. Other technology-driven changes accelerated by the pandemic—such as remote work and meeting over Zoom—have transformed how people wish to engage with others. This combination of changing habits and fewer events has created an unsettling double whammy for statisticians: We know our understanding of the ‘before times’ is no longer especially informative for this new era, but we don’t have new information from which to learn. In such a bind, a corporation may look at trends in purchasing or engagement data. The NYC Metro Area Chapter of the ASA took this as an opportunity to practice what we preach and conduct a survey to determine how best to serve our membership.
From January to February, we received 43 responses (out of nearly 400 members), which revealed priorities and preferences for future activities. The NYC Metro Chapter members are generally interested in educational events, whether refresher programs and workshops (63% interested) or programs discussing new methods and applications (77% interested). Looking a bit deeper, though, members working in nonprofits and retired members lean more toward refreshers, while those in academia and mid-career positions prefer to learn about new methods.
Both in-person and virtual networking events are popular (56% and 42%, respectively), with members in academia, senior-level members, and retired members preferring virtual events and students and early-career members preferring in-person ones. Enthusiasm for in-person networking seems to decline as careers progress. Different career stages and industries also have varying preferences for event timing. While weeknights are viable for 74% of respondents, members in industry and early-career members especially favor weeknights over other times.
In terms of outreach, 44% of survey participants showed enthusiasm for a cross-level mentorship-matching program, with consistent support at all career levels. It might be beneficial to offer this as a service at the chapter level and national level, as administrative overhead may be relatively fixed. Thoughtful user interface and user experience design in a web interface or digital app for matching mentors and mentees could allow members to choose how they’d like to participate and filter matches.
Mid-career and retired members also showed enthusiasm for outreach initiatives. Members also expressed interest in chapter awards and programs for job seekers aged 50+.
The survey highlighted AI as the most requested topic members would like to learn more about, encompassing applications in clinical trials, responsible use in AI/ML analytics, generative AI, computational advertising, coding, and productivity. Other requested topics included causal inference and R for analyses.
Self-identification by survey respondents also highlights potential gaps; the chapter has difficulty reaching early-career professionals who work outside academia, as well as members working in government. Practically, the results likely suffer from nonresponse bias, with only the most willing answering. Even so, as one goal is to jumpstart a flywheel of participation, engaging these most-enthusiastic members is a reasonable strategy.
In summary, the insights gained are: (1) face-to-face networking; (2) web-based courses; (3) all career-stage mentorships; (4) partnership with other organizations may be beneficial.
As a direct result of our survey, we held a well-attended happy hour event on March 28.
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