About Fedora Project Demographic Survey

Fedora Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Team <diversity@lists.fedoraproject.org>

This section documents the Fedora Project Demographic Survey research. This was work completed between 2016 to 2018 to launch a demographic survey to understand the Fedora Community. Because of legal concerns around recent data legislation passed in this time period (G.D.P.R.), the survey was planned but never published.

A majority of this work was completed at the Fedora Diversity FAD in January 2017.

This page represents six to eight months of work from the Fedora Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Team in late 2015 and early 2016. While the D.E.I. Team is no longer actively working on this survey due to data collection and storage concerns (i.e. G.D.P.R.), it is retained here for historical purposes. The team hopes our research and work may be useful for other Open Source communities and Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion programmes.

Objectives

The Fedora Project Demographic Survey established these key objectives for launching such a survey:

1. Understand baseline demographics about the Fedora Community.

  • Why this objective was important: Enables Fedora Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Team to identify different areas of need for contributing to Fedora, and prioritize to act on areas of most-immediate need.

  • Examples of target criteria:

    • Age

    • Gender

    • Race and cultural background

    • Geographic area or region

    • Disability

    • Parents and families

    • Non-English languages

2. Support underrepresented groups by supplementing on-boarding resources to other Fedora teams.

  • Why this objective was important:

    • Collaborate and support on-going work in other Fedora Teams by advising mentorship and teaching programs in Fedora Community

    • Disseminate best practices through mentorship and community on-boarding

  • Examples of possible partnering teams:

Miscellaneous comments

When the survey was first drafted in late 2016 and early 2017, several comments, ideas, and resources influenced the design of the survey and an outreach campaign for it. Some of the pending and unresolved notes are below for archival purposes.

  • How were you introduced to Fedora?

    1. By another Fedora contributor

    2. At a Fedora event (e.g. FAD / workshop / meetup / release party)

    3. Conference

    4. Hackerspace

    5. Red Hat

    6. Web / online

  • What makes contributing to Fedora difficult for you?

— Bee Padalkar (bee2502)

We also wanted to identify how the data will be used. We aimed to make a communication plan for how the data would be used. Ideally, information about data use and intentions is available and embedded in the survey.

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