Ruth: We tried a themed survey in 2011 on technology, but we were concerned that it skewed some of the feedback. We heard from several individuals who were either not particularly interested in new technologies or who believed that they were not as engaged in new technology that they would be skipping the survey since they didn't feel it applied to them. And we don't want the survey to just sample people who have a very strong opinion either for or against any particular topic.
Having written that explanation, I can say that we are looking to expand some of the demographic questions now that the survey is reaching such a large sampling of American stage managers. We are seeing many studies done on discrimination and wage inequalities based on gender, sexual orientation, and race with the arts and entertainment industries (see Meg's post for one example). So we are trying to learn more about all stage managers so that we can begin to study the extent to which some stage managers face discrimination. But large sections of the survey will continue to be about the day-to-day duties of a stage manager.
Post Merge: Oct 15, 2015, 02:31 pm
Lexie,
Great questions! It may be tough to get specific about the pay scales since many stage managers work for large and small companies in a single year. We are testing questions with "On average" and "On your most recent show" to see how it affects the responses to financial questions. But the freelance question is very promising....
Post Merge: Oct 15, 2015, 02:36 pm
Meg: We may need to slice the data a few different ways. For instance, in an Equity theatre, how much wage inequality exists if the majority of stage manager are earning union minimum? Then again, it would be a great question to ask all Equity stage manager how often they earn above the minimum - this might encourage more stage managers to negotiate!
In order to get meaningful data for those stage managers who don't work under union contracts, we need to get enough participants at the same stage in their careers and working at a similar size theatre company. We will see how our beta testers do with these parsing questions next week.