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Audience Data and Advocacy Tools

Dec 13, 2021
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Overview

The Audience Data and Advocacy Tools are a new and interactive way to engage with the results of the 2019 National Arts Participation Survey, Creating Our Future.

Developed by the Australia Council for the Arts and Lonergan Research, these tools provide new insights and opportunities to understand Australians’ engagement with and attitudes towards the arts.

The Audience Data and Advocacy Tools can be used to support advocacy, audience development and strategic planning.

Scroll down or click the links below to learn more about the Audience Data and Advocacy Tools:

Resources

Using the tools

There are two components to the Audience Data and Advocacy Tools:

  1. A statistical model that presents data from the 2019 National Arts Participation Survey as a set of population profiles. The Population Segmentation Model reflects how Australians can be grouped together based on a range of attitudinal and behavioural measures, including answers to key questions regarding their participation, motivations and barriers. Download the Population Segmentation Model here.
  2. A set of indexes, which enable data from the 2019 National Arts Participation Survey to be explored interactively by:
  • The Behavioural Index is based on how frequently Australians engage with arts activities. This includes frequency of attendance at events, reading, listening to music and creation across art forms. Explore the Behavioural Index here.
  • The Attitudinal Index is based on how much Australians support the arts and believe in their value. Explore the Attitudinal Index here.

The Audience Data and Advocacy Tools can be used to further understand Australians’ engagement with and attitudes towards the arts, including to:

  • identify deeper demographic insights and trends related to behaviour and attitudes
  • profile the population
  • identify groups of people who want to attend more
  • help understand why different attitudes are held
  • identify relationships between motivation to attend and actual attendance
  • identify relationships between behaviour and attitudes.

These insights can be used by the sector for strategic planning and advocacy initiatives, such as to:

  • help shift behaviour and perceptions of the arts
  • tailor communication to different audiences and increase engagement
  • inform audience development strategies, and reach new audiences
  • remove barriers and encourage attendance for those who would like to attend
  • inform policy frameworks and advocacy messaging
  • set Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and objectives to measure and track sector performance over time.

Download the Audience Data and Advocacy Tools Guide here.

The guide includes:

  • an introduction to the three tools and how to interpret them
  • examples demonstrating how the tools can be used by the sector, such as understanding more about how people feel about topics of policy interest
  • examples of the data that can be extracted from the tools, such as attendance, attitudes, motivations and barriers by index scores
  • step-by-step instructions for how to use the Behavioural and Attitudinal Indexes.

A full report on how the tools were created is also available here.

The Population Segmentation Model

The Population Segmentation Model is represented through the infographic below and reflects how Australians can be grouped together based on both their behaviour and attitudes towards arts and culture, and answers to key questions regarding their participation.

Figure 1 illustrates the five population segments, including their attitudes and behaviours, and their percentage of the population. There are five segments in the Population Segmentation Model: 1. Segment one holds 20% of the population. This segment shows little to no interest in engaging with the arts and are likely to have other interests. This segment holds a higher proportion of older men and are less likely to be culturally or linguistically diverse or First Nations. 2. Segment two holds 16% of the population. This segment engages moderately with the arts to socialise and have fun. They support the arts to some extent and are content with their current level of engagement. Fun and socialising are key drivers of engagement for this segment. This group skews towards women and older age groups. 3. Segment three holds 12% of the population. This segment engages with the arts to socialise and have fun but want to engage more. This is the first growth segment. Like segment two, this segment is moderately engaged and supportive and are driven by fun and socialising. However, they express a clear desire to engage more frequently. Cost and difficulty in accessing events are key barriers for this segment. This group holds a mix of ages and skews towards women. 4. Segment four holds 28% of the population. This segment love the arts, engage for fun and also to achieve higher goals, such as improved wellbeing, but want to engage more. This is the first advocacy segment. This segment reflects an engaged and creative audience who are supportive of the arts. This group also skews heavily towards women with a mix of ages but also holds are higher proportion of those from regional areas. 5. Segment five holds 25% of the population. This segment are creative arts advocates. They are engaged and supportive and attend more than all other segments. They are content with how often they attend arts events. It skews towards men and younger audiences and has high representation of culturally diverse and First Nations peoples.

 

The Attitudinal Index dashboard

Explore the Attitudinal Index through the interactive dashboard below.


Additional information

Over the past decade the National Arts Participation Survey, the arts landscape it examines, and the ways in which the sector needs to understand audiences, have evolved.

To support these evolving needs, the Australia Council and Lonergan Research developed new and interactive ways to explore the data from the 2019 National Arts Participation Survey, Creating Our Future.

The Audience Data and Advocacy Tools are a new resource that can be used to better understand Australians’ engagement with and attitudes towards the arts.

The tools were developed to create a resource for the arts sector – predominantly arts organisations, groups and peak bodies, as well as artists, academics, think tanks and all levels of government. The tools, however, can be used by anyone interested in better understanding Australians’ engagement with and attitudes towards the arts.

The Behavioural Index provides a measure based on how frequently Australians engage with arts activities. This includes frequency of attendance at events, reading, listening to music and creation across art forms. The Behavioural Index is coloured in purple.

The Attitudinal Index provides a measure based on how much Australians support the arts and believe in their value. The Attitudinal Index is coloured in teal, a blue green.

The Audience Data and Advocacy Tools Guide provides an indication of how the tools may be used. While specific uses of the tools are presented throughout the guide, these examples are not exhaustive and there are multiple ways the tools can be used to explore the data. Users may explore the dashboards in any way they like.

Insights from the Audience Data and Advocacy Tools can be used for strategic planning and advocacy. Depending on your strategy and goals, the dashboards can be used to identify more information on target audiences.

For example, if your organisation’s target audience is parents of children under 16 in South Australia, you can apply the location filter on the demographics dashboard page and test each quintile to see which holds the largest proportion of your target demographic. You can then use the other dashboard pages to understand more about the quintile(s) which hold this audience – from understanding their key motivations and barriers to how often they engage with the arts.

This audience may also behave differently depending on whether you are looking at them via the Behavioural Index or the Attitudinal Index. These insights may inform your organisation’s strategy in reaching this audience. For example, you may be able to tailor specific communication to this group or remove certain barriers that affect their participation.

The indexes are not able to be viewed side-by-side in one web browser. Separate browser windows may be used to compare dashboards side-by-side.

Singular charts from the same dashboard are unable to be viewed side-by-side in one web browser. Separate browser windows may be used to compare dashboards side-by-side.

Charts for both indexes are identical in structure. As the Behavioural and Attitudinal Indexes have been developed with different data, users may be interested in filtering the Indexes with the same filters to compare the two results.

The terms male and female have been used in the dashboard to align with the terms used in data collection. Data for the 2019 National Arts Participation Survey was collected using the gender categories:

  • Male
  • Female
  • Non-binary/gender diverse
  • Please tell us (please specify)
  • Prefer not to say.

The total sample sizes for categories ‘Non-binary/gender diverse’, ‘Please tell us (please specify)’ and ‘Prefer not to say’ were small. Sample sizes below 30 are not considered a robust sample size to draw statistically correct conclusions. Therefore, ‘Male’ and ‘Female’ are the only genders available to filter in the dashboard.

Benchmarks can be set by choosing a measure, or measures, of interest to you or your organisation and recording the relevant data points.

A benchmark can be as simple as looking at the percentage of those in the middle quintile who are in an age category of interest to you and who give to the arts. This percentage can be used as an initial benchmark measure and revisited in future years.

The dashboards cannot be filtered by artform at this stage. Art form filters may be explored in future versions of the tools.

Age, gender and location are currently the only available demographic filters. Additional demographic filters may be explored in future versions of the tools.

No, only one quintile can be selected at a time.

At this stage it is not possible to save your settings or findings within the dashboards.  However, you can download a dashboard view to PDF which will provide a snapshot of the data you’ve created in the dashboards.

A full report is available here which details the methods used to develop the Behavioural Index, Attitudinal Index and Population Segmentation Model.

To reset the dashboard, remove all applied filters by clicking on the highlighted filters.  To remove the demographic filters, select ‘All’ in the dropdown menu to apply all categories.

Four filters can be selected at the same time. When using the dashboards, the three demographic filters at the top of the page can be selected at the same time, as well as the index filter.

Applying multiple filters can reduce the available sample size to low numbers. We recommend caution when the sample size (n) reaches 30 or below. Results should then be used indicatively only.

A dashboard is a moving and interactive on-screen graphical summary of information.

Within each Index of the Audience Data and Advocacy Tools there are tabs that hold certain categories of information. Each tabs shows various relevant charts.

For example, the Attitudinal Index has five dashboards: Types of engagement, Motivations & barriers, Value of the arts, Diversity, Demographics. Each of these dashboards illustrate various charts based on their topic.

A segment is a grouping of people who are similar in characteristics of interest. Population segments may be different in size and there is no limit to the number of segments there can be in a population or market.

A quintile is one of five equal, segments of a population, divided based on a selected variable. 20% of a population is a quintile.

Due to rounding, the medium quintile displays as 21% in the Attitudinal Index dashboard.