The research methodology is a quantitative longitudinal tracking study. Instead of asking the same people to take the same survey at regular time intervals, which would be a true panel methodology, we are deploying the survey to different samples of ticket buyers with each wave of surveying, so that no one is asked to take the survey more than once. The approach to protocol design is to use a core module of key questions about audience attitudes about going out, and then rotate through other modules of questions, over the various deployments, to explore specific issues/questions that do not require time series data/results. We don’t know what questions we’ll need to be asking in July and August. What we are doing is creating the apparatus to collect whatever data is needed down the line, as well as time series data on key indicators. Finally, we will also be developing qualitative protocols (e.g., protocols for virtual focus groups on specific topics), which participating organizations will be able to implement on their own, with a bit of coaching from AMS/WolfBrown.
We expect to see regional differences in attitudes. It may or may not make sense to create aggregates of PACs in different regions or to group PACS in some other fashion. The dashboard allows us to make custom aggregates, so we can do whatever makes the most sense for everyone in terms of regional or other aggregates.
We are proposing that participating PACs deploy the survey to a pool of ticket buyers that represents the core of their audience. This might be Broadway only, or it might be a blend of Broadway and other product lines. We expect to see important variations by age, but we do not expect to see variations according to disciplinary preferences.
In the survey, we’ll be asking respondents to self-identify by their subscriber status, and we also take an indicator of loyalty and donor status. So, those will be available in the dashboard as filters (for cross-tabulation purposes). It’s important to know that some of the questions in the survey are general in nature and other questions will be asked in reference to your organization.
The contact information you select from your database should represent ticket buyers from Jan 2018 forward. Obviously, those same people may have attended events in your venue for many years prior to 2018, but the critical element is to consider them relatively “recent” ticket buyers.
The survey protocol should take somewhere between 12 – 15 minutes to complete.
A true panel study approach would involve recruiting a panel of respondents to take the survey multiple times. The WolfBrown research team concluded that such an approach was not optimal for several reasons. Instead, we are using a modified panel approach in which the survey is deployed to randomized sub-groups of patrons within an organization’s patron database.
A number of factors contributed to this decision:
WolfBrown has conducted several large-scale cohort studies of a similar nature, including:
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