Target Population
The Survey's target population includes 7685 philosophers drawn from two groups: (1) From Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the UK, and the US (6112 philosophers): all regular faculty members (tenure-track or permanent) in BA-granting philosophy departments with four or more members (according to the PhilPeople database). (2). From all other countries (1573 philosophers): English-publishing philosophers in BA-granting philosophy departments with four or more English-publishing faculty members. An English-publishing philosopher is defined as someone with one or more publications in the PhilPapers database in a wide range of English-language venues, including English-language journals and book publishers.
For meaningful longitudinal comparisons, we also designated a 100-department target group in the same regions as the 2009 survey, based largely on rankings (all Ph.D.-granting departments with a 2017-2018 Philosophical Gourmet Report score of 1.9 or above, plus two leading departments with MA programs and a selected group of European departments based on expert recommendations). This group of 2407 philosophers was used only for longitudinal comparisons.
We also allowed any PhilPeople user to take the survey, regardless of whether they were in the target populations. These populations cannot be considered controlled, but results for all respondents and for graduate students are given in some tables on this site.