Making Games Industry Job Applications Accessible and Inclusive — Part 2
This is part 2 of a 4 part series written about a survey we recently performed to try and figure out how to improve the diversity among applicants for jobs we advertised within the games industry.
If you missed part 1, you may want go catch up. We’ll be waiting for you here!
Part 1 — Background
Part 2 — Method (you are here! ;) )
Part 3 — Results
Part 4 — Conclusions
The survey
This section may not be super interesting (at least not compared with the actual results and conclusions!), but we thought it was worthwhile to talk through how we actually created the survey and came up with both the questions and the choices for answers.
In terms of logistics, we used Google Forms as a quick and easy way to get a survey up and running.
We ensured that respondents’ email address were not collected by default as we wanted the survey to be as anonymous as possible so people were able to be open and honest with their answers.
We did ask for email address as the final question but were careful to make sure it was labelled as explicitly optional, and only for use for the prize draw we were running for answering the survey.
All questions were optional, so people did not need to fill in answers to every single question. This was intended to make the survey as accessible as possible.
Who are you?
First off, we wanted to get an idea of the demographics (primarily so we could look in more detail at the answers provided to later questions). We specifically asked about visible demographics, which are most likely to lead to direct discrimination when applying for jobs.
There are obviously other traits which may be relevant (an obvious example is sexuality) but we wanted to focus on those which are most often apparent either through a CV or at an interview.
We chose to ask about identity along a number of axes:
- Gender — male, female, non-binary, or other (with a text field to fill in)
We chose to include both non-binary and other genders to be as inclusive as possible. We did make this choice a radio button so the respondents could not pick multiple genders, but the ability to add free text for other hopefully means we captured all genders people wanted to pick (while ensuring that the most likely genders were chosen from a standardised list for ease of analysis).
- Whether that gender matches that they were assigned at birth — yes, no, other
This is sort of “are you cis or trans?” but we wanted to allow an other option here as well in case there were people who felt neither binary option applied.
- Age group (we actually forgot this one until someone mentioned it a little while after we released the survey, at which point we added it, so thanks if you were a person who pointed this out!)
We grouped ages into 10-year ranges from 16 up to 66 (and included <16 and >66 too). In retrospect, I wish I had looked in more detail about UK demographic information easily available, because it turns out that they group people into 5-year ranges rather than 10 and therefore doing so would have meant this was easier to compare with national data.
- Ethnicity
This was a super tricky one to come up with inclusive and sensitive options, we ended up using the Office of National Statistics’ recommendation for survey options. Hopefully this was OK (at least, we didn’t get any comments that it wasn’t, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that much given the overwhelmingly white respondents!), please let us know if you know of any better resources for this sort of thing or better ways of asking.
- Disability status
This is fairly self-explanatory — we just asked whether the respondent identifies as disabled (asking if they are disabled felt like it would lead to some people worrying that if they were self-diagnosed that wouldn’t count).
We considered asking people to pick from a number of choices defining their disability (for example mental health, physical, learning disability etc.) but it soon became apparent that this was not a workable solution (not every disability fits into a neat box, and many conditions affect multiple areas).
Instead we asked them to describe their disability(/ies) and any accommodations that they require in a follow-up question. This means that we have a bit more work to do on the analysis side but was worth it to ensure that we were able to gather as much useful data as possible.
And what do you want?
After enquiring about demographic information, we led to the key part of the survey — what do under-represented people need to see in order to feel comfortable applying for a position with a company?
First up we asked about whether the diversity statement we mentioned earlier would have an effect on the likelihood of applying for a job with a company displaying that statement on their site. We allowed for three different options — More, Less, and other (with a text box for a write-in answer).
We then asked a few free-form questions:
- When looking at job listings and company websites, are there any things you especially look for that make you want to apply?
- And are there any things you look for as “red flags” that the company is not going to be a good fit for you?
- Do you have anything else to add on the topic of inclusivity or accessibility of careers within games?
These were intended to capture explicit actions that companies can take to make themselves more welcoming, as well as allowing for respondents to add information on topics we hadn’t thought to ask about explicitly.
Finally, we asked for email address. As noted above this was explicitly marked as optional and the use of it explained in a description field: As with all fields on this survey, this is entirely optional and will only be used for the prize draw (selecting and contacting the winner).
Survey Reach
With surveys and similar, there’s always a risk of only reaching people within your little bubble. To try and counter that we shared the survey on Twitter (asking people to retweet to try to get more reach) as well as via personal Facebook and a Slack server containing many people within the games industry in the UK. We generally shared the link to the initial announcement tweet so that we could accurately gauge reach and click-throughs.
We were lucky enough to get some fairly high-profile accounts sharing our tweet, and in total saw 8,678 impressions leading to 126 click-throughs.
Making Games Industry Job Applications Accessible and Inclusive
Part 1 — Background
Part 2 — Method (you are here! ;) )
Part 3 — Results
Part 4 — Conclusions
