Readings in Cultural Participation
New resources and forums inspired this effort to digest significant readings in cultural participation. Researchers at the Rand Corporation, for example, have been compiling a comprehensive literature review of readings in cultural participation and audience development for the Lila Wallace/Reader's Digest Fund. The review will soon be available on the World Wide Web and will expand on the helpful bibliography previously created by Becky Pettit and Paul DiMaggio. A session at the coming GIA conference in San Francisco focuses on practice and evaluation in cultural participation, and will be presented along with a compendium of readings.
What follows is not an exhaustive review but offers examples of reports and journal articles, representing four types: 1) histories — significant past works that continue to inform research; 2) participation studies — national surveys of public behavior and opinions; 3) strategies — regional research containing recommended actions; and 4) instances — strategies tried and lessons learned by organizations and grantmakers.
I. Histories
Studies of characteristics of the arts audience in the United States began by studying museum visitors in the 1920s and Federal Theater Project performances in the 1930s, but the scale and frequency of the research increased dramatically in the 1960s and 1970s. Early museum surveys were most often behavioral, focusing on how patrons interacted with specific exhibits. Baumol and Bowen's The Performing Arts: The Economic Dilemma, published by the MIT Press in 1966, brought new rigor and breadth to the study of audience patterns and demographics. While many at the time spoke of a “cultural explosion” in the United States, Baumol and Bowen found “...evidence of modest expansion in performing arts activity.” In characterizing performing arts audiences they found them to be somewhat younger, far more educated, of higher occupational status, and far more affluent than the general adult urban population. Frequent attenders were of even higher status than infrequent visitors.
In 1978 Paul DiMaggio, Michael Unseem, and Paula Brown, published “Audience Studies of the Performing Arts and Museums: A Critical Review,” for the NEA. The Endowment had grown aware of a rising number of audience surveys being conducted by performing arts organizations across the country. While a significant effort was being expended to collect information, nobody was compiling information across organizations, assessing the quality of research methods, or reviewing how the studies changed organizations' behavior. When the investigators instituted a diligent search for audience studies to compile and analyze, they hoped to find 100 to 150 surveys produced over several decades. They were surprised to uncover 270 surveys — most conducted after 1970.
The surveys in sum revealed patterns of arts participation that echoed Baumol and Bowen's findings and that hold up in subsequent research:
"...the culture-consuming public is more educated, has higher incomes, and has higher status jobs than the general public. Museum visitors were somewhat more representative of the public than performing arts audiences."
"...income was an important indicator of cultural participation but was less significant than level of education or whether one worked in a “profession” rather than a blue collar job."
A few of the researchers' analytical comments reveal interesting 1970s assumptions about audiences. While it was then (and it is now) generally true that women are better represented in arts audiences than men, a hypothesis was that the arts were a “feminine” activity, with a great disparity between male and female participation. This study revealed, “The stereotype of the arts as a predominantly feminine activity did not hold true. Women only slightly outnumbered men in relation to their percentage of the population of the whole.”
Also, audiences were perceived as becoming more “democratic” — representative of the general population because of greater equality of educational opportunity. In the previous decade Baumol and Bowen had concluded “...if there has been a significant rise in the size of audiences in recent years, it has certainly not yet encompassed the general public... Attempts to reach a wider and more representative audience, to interest the less educated or the less affluent, have so far had limited effects.” DiMaggio, Unseem, and Brown's 1977 findings state, “We could find no evidence that audiences were becoming more democratic. None of the variables showed any significant change in time over the last fifteen years.”
Very few of the surveys reported attendance by race or ethnic background, demographic variables that now are studied with interest. Optimism about an emerging socially and economically representative arts audience seems to have been replaced in our time by anxiety over the graying of the audience. As of this 1970s compilation, “the median age of visitors to museums was thirty-one and for the performing arts was thirty-five.” This age profile was similar to general population figures for the time — falling between the median age of the entire U.S. population (twenty-eight) and the median age of the population sixteen and over (forty).
Investigators found uneven methodology and rigor in organizations' research methods and little evidence that the data was being used to change marketing and other behavior. There was no evidence that higher quality research was used by organizations more than data that was poorly collected or analyzed. Further, no attention had been paid to the opinions and demographics of those not attending the arts. “Audience Studies of the Performing Arts and Museums” pointed to the need for a broader study of attitudes and behaviors of both attenders and non-attenders.
II. Participation Studies
Twenty years later, Becky Pettit of the Department of Sociology at Princeton produced the helpful overview, “Resources for Studying Public Participation in the Arts,” specifically covering more recent, broad analysis of participants and non-participants. Pettit discusses twenty-five studies — some local, some regional, and others national. Each entry describes the study, evaluates its technical strengths and weaknesses, and provides contact information. Her analyses of research methods and the validity of results are particularly useful to readers who are not social scientists and may be confused by varying sampling techniques and survey designs. Among studies analyzed are those conducted by Lou Harris — “Americans and the Arts” — between 1973 and 1992, the General Social Survey of 1993, several Canadian studies, and the NEA' Studies of Public Participation in the Arts.
Another helpful overview for general readers is the NEA's “A Practical Guide to Arts Participation Research: Research Division Report #20,” published in 1995. Accessible and clear, the report maps different styles and goals of participation studies along with methods of data collection. The guide is intended to be a “how-to” manual for grantmakers, chambers of commerce, and other organizations planning to conduct regional studies.
Surveys of Public Participation in the Arts (SPPAs)
Pettit's report and the “Practical Guide” are helpful prefaces to the Surveys of Public Participation in the Arts, (SPPAs) sponsored by the NEA beginning in 1982 and continuing in 1987, 1992, and 1997. “Participation” as analyzed in these reports includes attending live arts performances and exhibitions, listening to and watching broadcast or recorded arts programs, and personally performing or creating arts. Results allow for comparisons among different arts fields, demographic groups, and among alternative uses of leisure time.
The 1997 edition of the SPPA (published in December 1998) gathers some new information including: more specific details about arts performances and exhibitions attended and books read, barriers to the respondents' attending more arts events, information about how often and in what way the respondent used a personal computer in the arts, and “socialization” data about the respondents' relative level of exposure to the arts as a child and about how they are exposing their own children to the arts.
1997 results demonstrated markedly higher participation in the arts in almost all categories over the previous SPPAs, but one must approach this good news with caution. The 1997 research methodology was significantly different (as discussed in Appendix B to the report). Previous SPPAs were conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau as supplements to the National Crime Victimization Survey. Questions were asked through phone and face-to-face interviews with adults in a random sampling of households with and without telephones. Response rates were quite high (ranging between a low of 75 percent in 1992 and a high of 89 percent in 1982). The 1997 SPPA was a “stand alone” survey (not attached to questions about any other topic), was managed by an independent firm, and was conducted by telephone to a random sample of households. The response rate was 55 percent.
Factors that may have affected the 1997 reports of higher rates of participation include: 1) Self-selection. A lower response rate often occurs with telephone surveying because call recipients choose to respond based on whether or not they are interested in the survey topic. 2) Coverage bias. Because arts participation generally correlates to participant's relative wealth, surveying exclusively by telephone excludes poorer respondents. Data in the Appendix B on differences in research methodologies suggest that while the 1997 results may be high, prior years may have been too low. Lou Harris's research, for instance, consistently has shown higher rates of participation than the SPPA.
While the question of relative accuracy is important, the change in approach and resulting inability to compare confidently 1997 results to previous years' data is disappointing. The report is well-written and the patterns it suggests are helpful (and consistent with prior years), but trends cannot be assessed.
The SPPA reports that about half of the U.S. population attended one of seven arts activities in the previous twelve months. The most popular reported activities were reading literature and visiting art museums and historic sites. Participants in the arts via media (radio, television, recordings, etc.) were much more evenly distributed by race, age, income, and educational level than were participants who attended live events. However, the report also finds: “Among all the arts activities for both attenders and total attendance, the distribution of participation for reading literature matched most closely the age distribution of the entire U.S. adult population.” When respondents were asked about their personal, creative participation in the arts, the highest rates of personal participation were creative photography (17 percent), followed by painting/drawing/sculpting (16 percent), and dance other than ballet (13 percent). In 1997 more than 10 percent of the adult population in the United States — over 20 million people — sang publicly in a choir, chorus, or other ensemble. Responding to new questions asked in 1997, about 8 percent of respondents used computers to learn about arts events, and respondents exposed their own children to the arts at rates similar to their own exposures.
Different aspects of the 1997 SPPA currently are being analyzed, and grantmakers can watch the NEA website for release of more detailed analyses of the data such as: socialization factors (including general education and arts education) on predicting arts participation, demand for and barriers to participation, and arts participation by cultural background, gender, and age. Tracking behaviors of different age groups in the arts will continue as a bellwether for the arts. An earlier study, the NEA Research Report #34, “Age and Arts Participation with a Focus on the Baby Boom Cohort,” by Richard A. Peterson, Darren E. Sherkat, Judith Huggins Balfe, and Rolf Meyersohn (1996), looked at baby boomers' behaviors as demonstrated in the 1982 and 1992 SPPAs:
In every cohort, in every art form, those with more education and higher incomes participate at higher rates than those with less. Nonetheless, there is an overall decline in adult arts participation after the cohort born during World War II. The baby boomers are a surprise. Although better educated than their predecessors, they have not kept up in terms of active participation in the arts as would be expected. What accounts for this? Was the education the younger generation received the same as that of their elders? Findings confirm that not only was it different, it did not produce the same income.
In looking at the latest SPPA, the median age of arts attenders has gone up, but it is not much higher it was in 1992; in some art forms the median age has dropped. (The median age for the entire U.S. population has gone up gradually, and was 34.9 years in July 1997 according to the U.S. Census Bureau.) A cursory look at new age distribution patterns suggest that baby boomers now demonstrate the highest rates of participation in most art forms. If this reading is significant in deeper analysis, it will be interesting to study whether this large generational cohort has changed attitudes or whether arts participation may be predicted by reviewing the trajectory of any generation through the stages of life (inhibited at certain ages by health or having small children at home, and accelerated at others by greater wealth and leisure time).
General Social Survey
Quite different in character and form of analysis, the 1993 General Social Survey (GSS), conducted by the National Opinion Research Center, included a “Topical Module on the Sociology of Culture.” The General Social Survey is an almost annual survey of a randomly selected cross-section of English speaking residents of U.S. households. In 1993, 1,606 respondents were analyzed for personal values, predispositions towards kinds of action, artistic and cultural tastes, activities, and attitudes. The questions reached beyond arts participation, setting it within a broader assessment of values and behavior.
The General Social Survey web site provides very entertaining browsing, and the GSS Topical Report #26, “Conceptualizing and Measuring Culture in Surveys: Value, Strategies, and Symbols," is challenging reading but highly recommended. The “Topic Module Index-Culture” outlines answers to questions ranging from “OK to get rich even if others poor” and “Life outcome decided by God,” to “Like or dislike opera” and “attended auto race in last year.” Report #26 by Peter V. Marsden and Joseph F. Swingle outlines trends in sociologists' understanding of culture, summarizes GSS survey responses, discusses the process that developed the items included on the survey, and analyzes what the process taught investigators about the use of survey methods to measure concepts of interest to cultural sociologists.
Response to the survey's questions highlighted a valuing of individualism and independence. Respondents valued self-sufficiency over financial security and belief in God. “Standing up for your own opinion even if it makes others around uncomfortable” received a higher ranking than keeping one's view to oneself, and they valued the importance of individual will over genetic or divine fate. Honesty was a more valued quality in a friend than was creativity or being cultured. Music tastes were explored in depth because they play a role in defining status groups and age cohorts, and respondents also were asked about fourteen different leisure or recreational activities and a set of cultural attitudes. In analyzing the validity of this research method's contribution to cultural sociology, the authors conclude: “Surveys do not allow for the complex, multiple, and sometimes contradictory interpretations highlighted by concepts of culture stressing differentiation and (especially) ambivalence or ambiguity.... Surveys are best-suited to providing overviews of common cultural patterns, not to the nuanced investigation of particular patterns.”
Leisure and time-use studies
For other perspectives on participation in the arts one can look to the fields of leisure studies and studies of changes in time use. A large body of work in leisure studies focuses on sports participation and on the use of national parks — see the Journal of Leisure Research, Leisure Studies, and the Journal of Park and Recreation Administration. Studies of changes in our use of time include John Robinson's Time for Life: The Surprising Ways Americans Use their Time, and Juliet B. Schor's The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure. The time study field is split on the question of whether United States residents have more or less leisure time, and a recommended July 10, 1999 New York Times article by Janny Scott points out how differences in research methodology lead to these divergent opinions.
III. Strategies
Most efforts to increase arts participation across art forms have been regional, with research and cooperative marketing efforts going on in California, North Carolina, Ohio, Illinois, and other states. Research in this area often refers to the SPPA and also employs the language, data bases, and methods of commercial market research.
“Barriers and Motivations to Increased Arts Usage among Medium and Light Users,” by Deborah L. Obalil (March 1999) presents an action plan based on a 1996 “...major quantitative study” of Chicago area consumers' attitudes and behaviors with respect to the arts as a leisure time activity.” The report does not discuss the methodology for the study. It emphasizes improving the “total value” of the arts experience for medium users (those attending the arts ten to nineteen times per year with the arts representing 10 percent of their total leisure time activity) and light users (those attending three to six events per year).
“Barriers and Motivations” opens with consumer profiles of heavy, medium, and light users. Heavy and medium users demonstrate very similar values, but medium users are slightly younger, more likely to be married, slightly less affluent, and more likely to have children under the ages of eighteen at home. Light users are younger still, less likely to have attended college, and more likely to have children under the age of six at home. The income distribution for light users is reflective of the population at large.
Of interest is this report's analysis of differences in the barriers and motivations for these three groups' arts participation. For instance, light users often reserve arts activities for special occasions. They expect to spend a significant amount of money and they anticipate planning far in advance for the event. “For light users, participation is an all or nothing proposition.” Light users also want to take their children to arts events and “...clearly believe the benefit is solely for their children.” Cooperative strategies suggested for reaching light attenders include improving information about what to expect from arts events, including possible rating systems for appropriateness and accessibility of events for children.
The report proceeds to analyze the Chicago area audience by art form and suggests strategies for each discipline (visual arts, theater, music, and dance) to reach medium or light attenders. It is most optimistic about art museums' capacities to broaden participation and least optimistic about the capacity of dance to engage light and medium attenders: “...the majority of current dance attendees, more so than any other art form...fall into the heavy user category of arts consumers. ...A better possibility for audience development in dance lies with heavy users in other arts categories.” The study's emphasis on the quality of the overall arts experience (from the moment one leaves one's home to when one returns) highlights the importance of attenders' feeling comfortable inside and outside of the arts venue, being able to park, and having a relative easy commute. While not stated overtly, the report is pessimistic about the potential of alternative spaces in low income neighborhoods to draw more medium and light attenders.
ArtsMarket Consulting, Inc. of Bozeman, Montana has conducted a number of city- and region-specific studies of characteristics of and potential development of audiences. In a June 1998 paper presented in Durham, North Carolina, “Cross-cutting Themes and Findings,” Louse K. Stevens discusses the stress created by a current policy emphasis on increasing public engagement while arts organizations are working in a marketplace that has changed dramatically. Stevens outlines fifteen challenging trends, including the following:
- The older generation that has been the core arts audience is rapidly disappearing and being replaced by a younger generation with vastly different habits, interests, and perceptions: “The hot arts market is the post-boomer generation, which is coming along with broader, more wide ranging willingness to try diverse arts.”
- Much of the white collar work force now commutes to work in cities all over the country week in and week out, and they are as likely to visit an art museum at the end of a business trip as they are at home.
- Frequency of participation has declined: “people who describe themselves as frequent arts attenders may attend one to three times a year.”
- Markets become saturated with choice, and choice ha replaced urgency for arts audience.
- Ticket price sensitivity has peaked, “...and ticket prices often are the top deterrent to more frequent arts and cultural participation.”
Stevens' advice to arts organizations mirrors much of the advice in the Chicago “Barriers and Motivations” report. Organizations need to make participation easier, addressing every level of potential hassle from ticket order surcharges to parking. Being friendly to audiences with children is critical. Attending to business travelers can reveal significant new markets. Single ticket buyers need to feel as involved and important as subscribers or donors.
Stevens' opinions expressed in Durham grew out of ArtsMarket's regional research that employs a combination of techniques — surveying nonprofit organizations about their capacities and actual ticket sales, telephone surveys with audience members, focus groups with different types of arts attenders, and the compilation of multiple organizations' subscriber and ticket buyer lists to analyze which geodemographic groups are currently engaged in the arts and which represent potential new markets. Recent ArtsMarket work has focused on Columbus, Ohio, Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Detroit, Michigan.
An interesting feature of these reports is their specificity about regional trends and traits. Columbus, Grand Rapids, and Detroit audiences share many of the characteristics of U.S. audiences revealed by the SPPA, but each region also has distinct traits and challenges. For example:
In Grand Rapids, a high portion of the population participates in the arts but the frequency of participation is low. Median age is lower than national averages. Telephone surveys revealed cost as the highest ranked barrier to participation in Grand Rapids (rather than time, the highest ranked barrier in the SPPA). In the geodemographic analysis, Grand Rapids arts organizations are reaching 100 percent of the potential wealthiest families, seniors, and social security dependents, but there is potential for increasing attendance by other segments such as “urban professional couples” and “active senior singles.”
Columbus shows an even higher rate of participation in the arts: its arts and cultural market is strong. However, in the database compilation, only 17.5 percent of households showed an affiliation with more than one arts or cultural organization, suggesting that “There is clear potential to win...a ‘greater share of each consumer.’” Households in the Columbus database were dominated by two relatively young, upscale lifestyle clusters — “prosperous baby boomers” and enterprising young singles.” Also, there was a better than average representation of households of color involved in arts in Columbus. In analyzing barriers to participation, price and free time were weighted equally.
In Detroit the combined audience also was large and diverse demographically, and socio-economically. The challenge identified was to build consistency and loyalty. The current audience is largely constructed of single ticket/admission buyers, with subscribers making up only 7.6 percent of the total database.
IV. Instances
Since 1994, the Lila Wallace/Reader's Digest Fund has published reports organized by artistic discipline on grantees' efforts to increase public participation. The most recent two monographs, “Opening the Door to the Entire Community,” (November 1998) and “Engaging the Entire Community” (February 1999) offer brief, readable case studies of museums efforts to broaden participation. Nine organizations are profiled from communities as different as Phoenix and Newark. Their work was culled from among twenty-nine fine arts museums taking part in the Fund's Museum Collections Accessibility Initiative.
Many of the organizations profiled in “Opening the Door” are striving for greater racial and cultural diversity in their audiences. Among lessons learned, presenting culturally-specific exhibitions was not the only way to engage targeted cultural groups. For instance, when the Art Institute of Chicago conducted a focus group for single black males in their twenties, they uncovered the respondents' strong interest in 19th century landscape paintings. Another discovery was the public's interest in better understanding the economic and social context for work presented in different exhibitions.
Common strategies focused on reducing barriers to participation and building ambassadorial or community advisory groups — volunteers who represent the museum to others of their age or cultural backgrounds and who advise the museum on its presentation and marketing strategies. A theme that emerges in the profile of the Newark Museum and echoed in other case studies is a museum's need to rethink not what is exhibited to the public but how it is installed and presented.
Groups targeted by four museums in “Engaging the Entire Community” are not defined by race and culture but by age group, profession, and neighborhood affiliations. One lesson emerging strongly here is that if organizations are going to succeed at increasing participation, they need to involve all museum departments in that work. Other themes are the importance of respectful, ongoing partnerships with community groups, and the need to make an institution more porous to the audience — both reaching outside its walls and bringing unusual efforts inside its doors. One intriguing instance is the Toledo Museum of Arts' ability to work with Chrysler Corporation to present an exhibit of art created by some of its 5,000 employees.
These case studies make passing reference to the slowness of change and the significance of sticking with an effort for longer than two, three, or five years. They do not reveal how labor intensive or expensive these efforts were, but these accessible, generalized success studies are honest about unexpected results and consequences.
Specific case studies of work by organizations to increase audiences bring the grueling day-to-day work of engaging more arts participants in view. Much of this type of work can be found in journals focusing on specific artistic fields, such as Dance Magazine, Museum News, ARTnews, Theater, and Modern Drama. Two sample, practical pieces from Theater Management Journal, Dr. Linda Donohoe's “Audience Development through Community Networking,” and Richard Hansen's “Benefits of a ‘Half-Price' Subscription Night” report on experiments made by specific theaters working in quite different contexts.
Donohoe writes about her experience with marketing and audience development at the University of Texas-Pan American, located in the southern tip of Texas, about 20 miles from the Mexican border with a student population that is 90 percent Latino/Hispanic and a community that is the second most economically disadvantaged area of the United States. With only two percent of the local population having achieved a college education, demographics do not mirror the typical arts patron. Attendance at the University's theater was strong until 1992 when the largest and best-read newspaper in the area stopped covering nonprofit groups, and the arts in particular. The damage to the theater's audience was immediate: it dropped by 50 percent. Efforts to address this crisis included:
- developing a cooperative “Super Arts” mailing list of 12,000 names with as many other arts groups as possible, with the University paying for the upkeep of the lists
- offering a tiered “Guest Card/Star Card and Very Artsy Person Card” system offering free tickets to new patrons, and donating a performance once a year to a local nonprofit group
- encouraging a faculty member to write a weekly arts column in the local paper that discussed trends in the arts and advocated for the arts in general
- urging faculty to become active in community and professional organizations, speaking at private clubs, the Chamber of Commerce, and other local gatherings
- sponsoring an annual dinner for all area theater arts high school teachers to network and discuss topics of mutual concern.
Dr. Donohoe concludes, “We found that the above projects worked but required a great deal of commitment. In our case, we feel that our time was well spent. The University Theater has sold more season tickets than the basketball program.”
Assistant Professor Richard Hansen of Bradley University Theater discusses what the theater did to address “playing only to half a house on a Thursday night during the closing week of a two-week run.” Bradley created a half-price subscription option for these Thursdays, focusing on expanding its senior citizen audience. “To provide a further enticement to come on a Thursday night — when students enrolled in evening classes made available parking spaces more limited — the curtain time was moved from the community standard of 8:00 back to 7:30 p.m. It would now be possible to return home in time for the 10:00 news. ‘Second’ Thursdays became immediately attractive to older theater patrons.”
Hansen outlines in detail who responded to the campaign, the percentage of discounts of Bradley's different ticket options, ticket exchange rules, and other technical aspects of the new subscription. Benefits of the half-price subscriptions were realized within two years. New subscribers renewed — some for the higher priced weekend seats. ‘Second’ Thursdays are virtually sold out. Positive word of mouth resulted in more single ticket buyers. And overall subscriptions increased by over 50 percent. Hansen concludes: “Clearly the introduction of a half-price subscription can initiate and inspire new audiences while providing increased income.”
From practical case-studies to discussions of leisure theory, volunteerism, and time use, readings in cultural participation reflect the complex and often contradictory attitudes contemporary residents of North America hold towards artists and the arts. Over the past thirty years factors determining the likelihood that someone will become a “heavy attender” of arts events have been quite consistent, but popular perceptions of audience trends have changed dramatically. The better that the research and documentation of case studies can be conducted and shared, the more likely that fact and perception will be aligned.
Readings in Cultural Participation: Bibliography
Baumol, William J. and Bowen, William G., Performing Arts — the Economic Dilemma, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1966.
Pettit, Becky and DiMaggio, Paul, “A Bibliography of Research on Public Participation in the Arts,” Princeton University Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies.
DiMaggio, Paul, Unseem, Michael, and Brown, Paula, Center for the Study of Public Policy, “Audience Studies of the Performing Arts and Museums: A Critical Review,” Research Division Report #9, National Endowment for the Arts, Washington D.C., 1978.
Pettit, Becky, “Resources for Studying Public Participation in the Arts, An Inventory and Review of Available Survey Data on North Americans' Participation in and Attitudes towards the Arts,” Working Paper No. 2 of the Princeton University Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies, Woodrow Wilson School, February 1997.
“A Practical Guide to Arts Participation,” Research Division Report #30, AMS Planning and Research Corp., Fairfield, CT, National Endowment for the Arts, Washington D.C., 1995.
“1997 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, Summary Report,” Research Division Report #39, National Endowment for the Arts, Washington, D.C., 1998.
Peterson, Richard A., Darren E. Sherkat, Balfe, Judith Huggins, and Meyerson, Rolf, “Age and Arts Participation with a Focus on the Baby Boom Cohort,” NEA Research Report #34, Seven Locks Press, Santa Ana, CA, 1996.
Marsden, Peter V., and Swingle, Joseph F., “Conceptualizing and Measuring Culture in Surveys: Value, Strategies, and Symbols,” Report #26, the National Opinion Research Center, 1993.
“Topic Module Index-Culture (1993),” General Social Survey, National
Opinion Research Center.
Scott, Janny, “Working Hard, More or Less,” The New York Times, July 10, 1999.
Robinson, John, and Godbey, Geoffrey, Time for Life: The Surprising Ways Americans Use their Time, The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, PA, 1997.
Schor, Juliet B., The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure Time, Basic Books, 1993.
Obalil, Deborah, L., “Barriers and Motivations to Increased Arts Usage Among Medium and Light Users,” The Arts Marketing Center of the Arts & Business Council of Chicago, Chicago, IL, March 1999.
Stevens, Louise K., “Cross Cutting Themes and Findings: A Brief Summary of the ‘Shared Wisdom' Meeting,” sponsored by the Durham Arts Council, ArtsMarket Consulting, Bozeman, MT, June 1998.
Stevens, Louise K., “Grand Rapids Consortia Study,” ArtsMarket Consulting, Bozeman, MT, 1999.
Stevens, Louise K., “Greater Columbus Arts Council Cultural and Arts
Market Analysis Study,” ArtsMarket Consulting, Bozeman, MT, May 14, 1998.
Stevens, Louise K., “Greater Detroit Region Market Study,” ArtsMarket Consulting, Bozeman, MT 1999.
Donohoe, Linda, “Audience Development through Community Networking,” Theater Management Journal, Vol. 1, No. 1, Theater Management Focus Group, Association for Theater in Higher Education, December 1997, Gainsville, FL.
Hansen, Richard, “Benefits of a ‘Half-Price’ Subscription Night,” Theater Management Journal, Vol. 2, No. 1, Theater Management Focus Group, Association for Theater in Higher Education, December 1998, Gainsville, FL.
“Opening the Door to the Entire Community: How Museums Are Using Permanent Collections to Engage Audiences,” Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund (New York: November 1998).
“Engaging the Entire Community: A New Role for Permanent Collections,” Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund, (New York: February 1999).