There are many ways of doing this. First, one hopes that the survey instrument—the questions being asked—and the sampling strategy itself have been piloted and any kinks removed before data collection begins. Then, once the data pour in, they must be cleaned and weighted if the goal is to extrapolate results to a larger group.
6 comments:
I was surprised that the people are only considered “artists” for survey purposes if they meet a pretty intense list of criteria, one of which includes making most of their money from an artistic field. I would say that a lot of theater artists, particularly those living in big cities do not make most of their money as an artist and have temp jobs (or even extremely flexible full time jobs) to fill in the gaps to afford living in the city while going to auditions or interviews regularly. Alternatively, many artists take small term outside of the arts jobs between contracts. I would not only call the standard definition of “artists” by the NEA’s standard ”inadequate” as the article suggests, I would call them blatantly incorrect. Maybe in the distant past, people could afford to donate all of their time to the arts especially in the early years and expect to make returns later in life, but with the rise of property values, rental rates, the cost of food, student loan rates, and the basic needs to actually be an artist (including having your own computer, a cell phone and associated bills, marketing information, possibly even a webpage, expensive computer programs, etc.), I cannot imagine going for longer than two weeks without a paying job not matter what field its in, and I would consider myself an artist.
I was surprised to learn how important proper surveying is in the arts fields. Of course, it makes a lot of sense. The arts exist primarily as a public commodity, so having a thorough understanding of how many in the public participate in the arts is key. I’m glad the NEA is developing their system for public surveying about the arts. This will better reflect the who, when, and where of art consumption and allow artists a better understanding of how the industry is performing. I was unaware of the qualifications necessary to be considered a career artist in the eyes of the Census Bureau. I’m glad the NEA provides some supplemental information on that front. But this knowledge does have me wondering which other industries have similar issues with the Census Bureau, and how accurate we can assume those statistics to be. I know the arts tend to be a more complicated field to understand since it is so unregulated and subjective, but the same could be said about a great many other fields to some degree. It will be interesting to see how the NEA develops it statistical supplements and if these issues in the census will be fixed in the future.
Trying to categorize and create statistics out of the arts and artists feels like some sort of irony. This irony manifests itself especially the detailed requirements of what classifies an artist. I'm sure someone somewhere made those rules as a way to manage the people that were being surveyed. I'm sure (and I hope) the regulations were resisted, but nonetheless were put in place to protect the system. I don't have the solution to how to classify artists. I'm not entirely sure that there is an answer. I do appreciate, however, that this article was taking note of the issue. This article was not solely cataloging the purpose of surveying the arts, but was looking at it with a critical eye which can be difficult to find when concerning such statistical content. It will be interesting to see if the NEA will provide any sort of change in defining artists, and if that change will also be resisted. As artists we tend to resist the systems places on us, so I am very curious of this outcome.
I won’t delve too far into what I think the article could have gone into – but clearly didn’t as it is not the point of the article – but what is art. This is discussed a little bit as the article questions how a person defines themselves as an artist, even if their income is coming from elsewhere, but I think the place to start from is asking what art is in the first place. Art is vitally important in our world, so I appreciate organizations like this who want to support artists on a wide scale and attempt to express their experiences similarly to other professions which some people may refer to as being more “normal.” It is also really cool – in my opinion – that it mentions the skills which are gained from an undergraduate education in the arts which – at least for theatre design and production – is a lot of what other industries/majors learn, just in a different application. It is taught in ways which are different from the first way we learned the concept, so it helps us further by making us think about how things can be used in different ways than how they are originally taught/presented to us.
Having in the past tried to used data to study the arts, I find this article interesting. The arts industry has always been an extremely difficult task when people endeavor to analyze it. This I feel it is mostly due to the fact of what the article discusses that to first look at the arts analytically you need to define artist. Both a simple task and one that will never be met with full statisfaction from any both in the analytical feilds and the arts.
I agree with Marf about the dissonance between art and trying to quantify artists with statistics. The question of whether or not an artist who works two jobs during the week but does art on the weekends is a real artist is particularly silly. If people have jobs, it doesn't make their art any less viable, and if they need jobs to sustain the art that they are trying to make, how can you disqualify them? The author explains multiple ways that one could hypothetically survey artists, and yet, most of them seem to be an overly scientific way to explain a concept that isn't rooted in very much science at all (unless you consider the whole left brain right brain argument). I think the omnibus idea, which would catalog the information about artists pertaining to degrees, industries, and jobs for artists would be the most effective out of any of them, since you can see a clear line across that artists' career that would certainly be worth evaluating, especially if you're new to the field and want to look at how people who are doing what you want to do have performed in the past. I also agree with William that the fact that learning these skills in undergrad being similar to any other undergrad program is a cool perspective, and one that the world would do well to look at more often.
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