Some communities that participate with SMU DataArts have come together to study the demographic makeup of the staff, boards, independent contractors, and volunteers in their arts and cultural organizations. These studies help a defined geographic area capture a demographic baseline of the arts and cultural workforce, and begin to identify ways the sector as a whole can better represent and serve their area. Learn more about these workforce demographic studies.
When you or others at your organization complete the demographic survey, that data will automatically be included in a community-level report. Organizations with 10 or more people serving as staff, board members, independent contractors, or volunteers will also be eligible to receive an organization-specific report about workforce demographics.
In order to receive this report, organizations will have to reach a high enough participation threshold that we can both protect individuals' privacy and have a high level of confidence that the percentages we share are accurate. One of your first tasks is to enter the total number of staff, board, independent contractors, and volunteers who make up the population of potential survey participants at your organization. We use this figure to calculate three potential participation thresholds.
At the Bronze level, we have 90% confidence with a 10% margin of error that the survey participants have reported data that is within ten percentage points of the value for the total workforce. For example, if you reached a Bronze level and we reported that 18% of your workforce were born between 1945 and 1964, we would be 90% confident that if the entire workforce had completed the survey the value would be between 8% and 28%.
At the Silver level, we are 90% confident that the reported data is within seven percentage points of the value for the total workforce. If we reported that 18% of your workforce were born between 1945 and 1964 at a Silver level, we would be 90% confident that if the entire workforce completed the survey the value would be between 11% and 25%.
At the Gold level, we are 90% confident that the report data is within five percentage points of the value for the total workforce. If we reported that 18% of your workforce were born between 1945 and 1964 at a Gold level, we would be 90% confident that if the entire workforce completed the survey the value would be between 13% and 23%.
For organizations with a workforce of 275 or more people we have added additional criteria to control for selection bias. For these larger organizations, 20% of the workforce must respond to the survey in order to receive a report at the bronze level of participation. At 30% participation your organization will reach the silver level, and at 40% your organization will reach the gold level.
We encourage you to strive for the Gold level to the extent that it is feasible within the context of your organization. We want you to have data that is the best possible representation of your workforce! The reminder emails available to the organizational point of contact are designed to help your organization achieve the highest response rate possible.
At the same time, we understand that reminders may not be enough to get everyone at your organization to participate in this demographic survey. We set these levels so that we could share an organizational report based on varying degrees of participation, and clearly convey how representative the reported figures are for your entire workforce.
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