Stoic Week 2018 Demographics Report by Tim LeBon

One main activity of the Modern Stoicism organization is carrying out research on the impact of adopting Stoic practices, perspectives, and principles on those who do so.  Every year we run the Stoic Week online class, and we also gather valuable data through the surveys before and after participants engage in the class.  Tim LeBon is our lead quantitative researcher, and he does invaluable service in compiling and interpreting the data collected, producing a set of Stoic Week Reports.  This is the first report for this year.

Stoic Week is over, we hope you enjoyed it and found it helpful.  This is the first in a series of articles reporting on what we  learnt from it. Today we have answers to the following questions

• How many people took part? Were there more men or women? Which gender is more Stoic?
• How old are the participants of Stoic Week? Do you get more Stoic as you get older?
• Which countries took part and which countries are the most (and least) Stoic?
• Do people take part in Stoic Week more than once? Are people more Stoic the more times they do Stoic Week?
• Why do people take part in Stoic week?

How many people took part? Were there more men or women? Which gender is more Stoic?

Table 1: Stoic Week 2018 by gender  (*Percentages in this and other tables may not add up to 100% due to rounding)

• More people completed the Stoic Week questionnaires than in 2017. 3899  people did so, an increase from 2860 in 2017 which was more than the 1798 in 2016. This was despite a longer SABS questionnaire to complete and the requirement to ask for GDPR consent. 3555 did not finish the questionnaires although they started and only 196 denied consent. This gives a total figure for 7650 people who accessed the questionnaires.
• The ratio of males to females was 62% to 37%. This compared with 65% to 34% last year showing a slight increase in number of females talking part.
• Men were marginally more Stoic then women as measured by SABS scored, though those who identified as “Other” ((admittedly a very small sample) were the most Stoic.

How old are the participants of Stoic Week? Do you get more Stoic as you get older?

Table 2: A wide range of ages take part in Stoic Week. It does seem that you get more Stoic as you get older.

 Which countries too part and which countries are the most (and least) Stoic?

Table 3: Stoic Week 2018 by country

For the first time we obtained specific country data. Table 3 shows all countries with more than 10 participants in Stoic Week. Of these, the most Stoic were Singapore, Mexico, the Irish Republic and the United States. Least Stoic were the Czech Republic, the Ukraine and the Russian Federation.

Do people take part in Stoic Week more than once? Are people more Stoic if they’ve taken part a number of times?

 Table 4: Stoic Week 2018 : Previous participation

More than 70% of participants are first-timers, but those who do take part appear to be significantly more Stoic as a result.

How much do participants say they know about Stoicism?

Table 5: Stoic Week 2018

Most people say that know a bit about Stoicism, which as many as 10% doing Stoic Week without knowing anything about it. There is a strong association between how much people know about Stoicism and how Stoic they are according to the SABS.

Table 5: How Stoic do  participants rate themselves? How closely does this connect with their SABS score?

For the first time, we asked people to what extent they identified as  a Stoic. Interestingly, about the same number are neutral as think they are more Stoic than not Stoic. A relatively small number consider themselves to be a Stoic whilst as many as 6% are doing Stoic week despite definitely not being a Stoic, which is perhaps surprising.

Why did people take part in Stoic week?

Below is the “word cloud” for the reasons given for taking part in Stoic Week.