Soon after COVID-19 broke, a premium was placed on certain types of arts data—what losses the sector would sustain, how quickly it would recover, and how visitor/audience perceptions and expectations were likely to shift in the interval. Various surveys sprung up to address these topics. More or less in tandem—but tied to longer, systemic struggles—another class of data has … [Read more...] about Arts Business Ownership – Statistics on Race, Ethnicity, and Gender
Quick Study: Findings from a Longitudinal Study of Arts Education
For this entry, I’m sharing the latest episode of the NEA’s research podcast (Quick Study). This month, we look at promising study results from Boston’s public schools, where arts education has been linked to better attendance and overall school engagement, thanks to a unique research collaboration spanning more than a decade of data from 600,000 students. The full report is … [Read more...] about Quick Study: Findings from a Longitudinal Study of Arts Education
Sampling Beats and Youth Research Participants – in Real Time
In research terms, a convenience sample is a group of folks who feature in a study because—well, they happened to be there. Convenience samples do not permit truly random assignments of individuals into the cohorts being studied. For this reason, it is impossible to apply the study results to the general population, or to make claims about statistical significance. And yet, … [Read more...] about Sampling Beats and Youth Research Participants – in Real Time
The Diversity of Performing Arts Audiences: Weighing Organizational Factors and Business Decisions
A year ago this month, Zannie Voss and Jill Robinson produced one of the first action-oriented research reports about COVID-19’s impact on arts organizations. In the report, titled In it for the Long Haul, Voss and Robinson—who head, respectively, the academic think tank SMU DataArts and its industry partner, TRG Arts—predicted that “the communal nature of arts participation … [Read more...] about The Diversity of Performing Arts Audiences: Weighing Organizational Factors and Business Decisions
Web Streaming and Book Publishing: Two Bright Spots for the Cultural Sector During COVID-19?
The numbers are out: arts and cultural industries contribute nearly a trillion dollars to U.S. GDP, you read. They employ 5.2 million workers (not counting the self-employed), and continue to keep admirable pace with our growing economy. Then you spot the dateline. Released on March 30 by the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the National Endowment for the Arts, the findings … [Read more...] about Web Streaming and Book Publishing: Two Bright Spots for the Cultural Sector During COVID-19?