The Cultural Lives of Californians: Insights from the California Survey of Arts and Cultural Participation

Over the past two decades, numerous reports indicate that national rates of arts attendance have been declining. This downward trend is reflected in both survey data and in the day-to-day experiences of many nonprofit arts organizations. In California, attendance rates -- as defined by traditional measures -- have also declined. And yet, there is a sense that the arts and culture are flourishing as never before, with a renewed vigor and excitement. How do we understand this apparent contradiction?The trend in attendance figures, however, does not reflect Californians' participation in a wide array of arts and cultural activities. People's participation in arts and cultural activities, especially in ways that allow them to develop or release their own artistic impulse, is extensive -- and perhaps nowhere more so than in California.At the same time, California's cultural landscape is undergoing massive changes, affecting the ways people encounter, experience and engage with art. These changes include California's demographic shift to being a so-called "majority-minority" state and rapid technological advances that offer new opportunities for artistic expression and access. These changes pose challenges and exciting new opportunities for how artists and organizations create and share their expertise and work. But to understand these changes and their implications for the nonprofit arts field, a broader, more nuanced, more complete understanding of how Californians participate in arts and culture is required.The California Survey of Arts & Cultural Participation is a tool we developed to ask a wide range of questions about what Californians do to engage with arts and culture

A Closer Look at Arts Engagement in California: Insights from the NEA’s Survey of Public Participation in the Arts

Every four years, the National Endowment for the Arts and the United States Census Bureau partner to survey tens of thousands of adults across the country in an attempt to understand how people participate in the arts. Using data from the most recent survey–2012's Survey of Public Participation in the Arts–the James Irvine Foundation partnered with NORC to take a closer look at arts engagement in California. This report is the first in a two-part study commissioned by the Irvine Foundation to understand what California’s residents do to participate in the arts and, importantly, how that varies across the state’s diverse population. (View the second report, The Cultural Lives of Californians.) The report finds that attendance at arts nonprofit-sponsored events have fallen, and even more so, that a lot of arts audiences don’t reflect California’s diversity—in terms of race and ethnicity, income, or education level. At the same time, it found that while Californians are attending traditional arts events less, they are participating in arts in many other new and exciting ways. Arts participation has traditionally been understood to mean arts attendance—and this is what the survey explores—but the data shows that we can benefit from a new understanding and definition for arts participation

The Cultural Lives of Californians: Insights from the California Survey of Arts & Cultural Participation

This report presents findings from the California Survey of Arts & Cultural Participation, a new study commissioned by The James Irvine Foundation and conducted by researchers at NORC at the University of Chicago. The Cultural Lives of Californians: Insights from the California Survey of Arts & Cultural Participation reframes the conversation about arts participation and provides extraordinary insights on the critical role that arts nonprofits can play in communities. This data challenges the notion that arts participation is in decline, instead suggesting that Californians are engaging in art in new ways and places — a reflection of emerging technologies, expectations, and cultural norms. Report findings point to questions and opportunities for nonprofit arts organizations, funders, and sector leaders to boost their relevance to the state’s increasingly diverse and changing population and to bring the benefit of the arts to all Californians

Data Quality in the Retrospective Reporting of Addresses

While tracking the movement of respondents has always been crucial for panel studies, the increasing popularity of geographic analyses has furthered the demand for both accurate and systematic address collection. This paper advances the existing literature on retrospective reporting in surveys by focusing on the collection of respondents‘ past addresses. It features data from the third wave of Making Connections, a ten-year, neighborhood-based survey funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. The wave three questionnaire featured a new series that solicited a detailed history of respondents‘ movement during the previous three years. Recovering previous addresses presented challenges beyond those typically associated with the systematic recording of physical addresses because recalling information from the past is inevitably more difficult than describing the present (Kennickell and Starr-McCluer 1997). We designed an experiment to test different methods of maximizing data quality in the retrospective address series collected in 2009 in White Center (Seattle), Washington. Households were randomly assigned to two treatment groups. Addresses collected from the first group underwent administrative data cleaning (using Google Maps, etc.) while those in the second group received intensive follow-up calls by a team of field interviewers and managers. We compare the results of these treatments to the original data collected in White Center and investigate the efficacy of each method for producing addresses that can be successfully translated into geographic coordinates for spatial analyses. We find that the retrieval effort – while more costly to execute – was far more successful in returning ‗geocodable‘ addresses. This supports the argument that successful collection of retrospective addresses depends on an interactive process between the interviewer and respondent involving a variety of probing techniques. Our findings may inform improved methodologies for collecting retrospective data in both panel and cross-sectional surveys

Poetry in America

Presents findings from a survey of more than 1,000 adult readers with varying levels of interest in poetry. Looks at the current role of poetry, and serves as a benchmark for measuring future initiatives, including audience development programs

Mapping Cultural Participation in Chicago

Chicago is internationally known for the excellence of its major cultural institutions, which attract millions of visitors every year. What is the relationship between these organizations and the diverse population of Chicago? This study takes a significant step toward answering this question. Mapping Cultural Participation in Chicago is the first study of its kind of a major U.S. metropolitan area, and draws upon data – ticket purchases, subscriptions, donor lists – from Chicago’s 12 largest cultural organizations and 49 smaller organizations. This information was linked to census data on socio-economic status, race, and ethnicity to provide neighborhood-by-neighborhood maps of participation patterns. The study, funded by a grant from the Joyce Foundation, establishes the first benchmark to enable organizations to assess the future effectiveness of their diversity-building efforts among African-Americans and Latinos. Researchers, led by Professors Robert LaLonde and Colm O’Muircheartaigh of the Harris School of Public Policy Studies at the University of Chicago, found that Chicagoans are generally strong supporters of the largest institutions, with one household in six participating. The most engaged communities – where one household in two participates – are located in the North Shore suburbs and in the western suburb of River Forest. The lowest involvement in the major cultural institutions falls in the south and west sides and the near south suburbs. While race and ethnicity do play a role in lower participation rates among African-Americans and Latinos, "socio-economic factors are the strongest predictors of participation," says O'Muircheartaigh. Among other key findings: Smaller ethnic and diverse organizations successfully reach different audiences from those targeted by larger organizations. There are large, predominantly white areas, regardless of income, where participation rates are low. In the lowest participation communities, an average of one in twenty households was involved in the largest organizations