Each phase, the survey will be designed and tested to ensure it’s an appropriate length. We’ll be providing respondents with information about the length of the survey in the survey invitation. We aim to keep it as short as possible, while addressing the complexity of some of the issues.

Unfortunately we can’t provide you with any part of the survey questionnaire before registering to participate. However, after you register to participate you will have an opportunity to view the questionnaire. From here, you are welcome to get in touch if you have any queries, and you can choose to withdraw from the study if needed at that point.

Yes, you may follow your usual approach to design and branding, so the email is recognisably from your organisation. However please ensure that you include all content from the survey invitation provided, including the link to the study partners and the study’s Privacy Policy.

The prize draw Terms and Conditions are displayed within the survey, at the point where respondents can opt-in to enter the prize draw. They are also available here, and this link will also be included in the survey invitation email template if you want to include a link in your campaign. For Phase 8, the prize draw closing date is 16 October 2022, and the prize will be drawn on 18 October 2022.

You need at least 1,050 audience members in your database to participate. This ensures that you’ll have at least 350 unique email addresses to send the survey link at each phase, and that each person will only receive a survey link from your organisation once in 2022.

An audience member is anyone who has purchased a ticket or attended an in-person event from your organisation since 1 January 2018. This includes single ticket buyers, subscribers, members, visitors and in-person event attendees. Please exclude people who have only attended or participated in an online arts and culture activity from your organisation.

Organisations that participated in 2020 and 2021 can use the same lists to participate in 2022. You sent the survey invitation to your Phase 1 list in March 2022 and will send the invitation to your Phase 2 list in October 2022. Keep a copy of your third list (your ‘Phase 3’ list) — if the study does need to continue in 2023, we will ask you to use that list. If your organisation has a large database, or if you have the capacity to extract new lists of audience members who have attended an in-person event since 1 January 2018, you are welcome to do so. If you have a smaller database, you can add recent attendees to your audience sample, based on audience members who have attended an event from your organisation since 1 January 2018.

As a tracking study, the more consistent the cohort is, the more reliable the findings are. We hope that participating organisations will continue, however we acknowledge that some organisations have particular challenges and may not have capacity to continue in 2022. If this is the case, or if you need assistance of any kind, please let us know by contacting bianca@thepatternmakers.com.au.

If your audience database contains between 1,050 and 14,999 people, then across the total phases of data collection, you will be sending the survey to your whole database. If you’re new to the study this year, prior to the March 2022 phase of data collection, you would have randomly divided your audience sample into three equally-sized sub-lists. For example, you might have named them ‘List 1’, ‘List 2’ and ‘List 3’. You sent the survey invitation to List 1 in March 2022 and will send the survey invitation to List 2 in October 2022. If you have a total 2,400 people in your audience database for instance, – you would need to send the survey to 800 people in March 2022 and another 800 in October 2022. Keep a copy of your third list — if the study does need to continue in 2023, we will ask you to use ‘List 3’ for another phase of data collection. If your audience database contains 15,000+ people, you would have pulled a random sample of 15,000 people from your audience database. Then, followed the same process: randomly dividing the list into three equally-sized lists of 5,000, and sending to one list at each phase.

Different organisations use different software for managing their audience database, so you are welcome to apply your own method to ensure a balanced list of single ticket buyers, donors, subscribers, members etc. However, a simple way that we recommend is to put your list of audience members into an Excel spreadsheet and follow these instructions.

No. You only need to prepare and divide your list of audiences members, ready to send invitations to their email addresses at each phase.

No. The survey will need to be sent to a different random sample of people at each phase and each sample must contain at least 350 unique email addresses.

Unfortunately, if you have less than 1,050 audience members in your database, you won’t be eligible to participate in this study. This minimum is in place to ensure we have a stable cohort to track over time. If you are unable to participate, you will still be able to access the results through the dashboard. Results will be shared in aggregate, and you will be able to filter the data to find results that are relevant to your artform and region.

It is possible that some of your audience members may receive an invitation to complete the survey from two or more organisations. This is one of the reasons why we are limiting the audience sample for each Phase at 5,000 so that large organisations are not sending the survey to their whole database. We will include clarifying instructions for respondents in the invitation email, which explains that they only need to complete the survey once. There have only been a few instances of this reported to us, and most audiences understand the need for the research and the value in collaborating. The data is collected once but shared for everyone to use, so it prevents audiences from receiving invitations to a lot of different surveys about the same topic.

In this case, to participate in what is an international study, we need to use an offshore software provider, Alchemer. However, both Patternmakers and WolfBrown, our partner research agency, are committed to the Australian Privacy Act. The study’s Privacy Policy has all the information regarding data collection and storage related to the project, if you’d like to read more.

In terms of participant contact details, nothing will be collected in the main survey. The survey software does record IP addresses, like many websites that use cookies, etc. However, we are using an incentive to motivate participation, as it's important the survey gets a strong response within a short timeframe, and we want to motivate participation by people who may be less engaged with the topic. We're also giving people the option to opt-in to further research, if they want to. As this study is entirely new, we may decide there is a case to conduct follow-up online focus groups or do a follow-up survey down the track to probe further on a particular finding. To enter the prize draw incentive, or to join the panel database to participate in further research, participants will need to provide their email addresses. Both are completely optional, and participants can choose to opt-in. This personally identifiable information will be stored separately from the survey responses, meaning survey responses will remain confidential. The information collected will only ever be used for research in the public interest, and would never be used for marketing or fundraising.

The results will be available in the online dashboard tool within two weeks of the survey closing. Patternmakers will also be analysing the data and disseminating snapshot reports through its communication channels and study partners’ networks.

Australian results will be reported in aggregate on the online dashboard tool. You will be able to access aggregate data, and filter the data to access results that are relevant to your artform and region. You may also request an Excel file with responses from members of your database within four weeks of the survey closing. However, please note that sample sizes may be small, and the study is designed to provide insights at the aggregated sector level.