Theatre Design & Technology - Summer 2012 - 29

Most notable here is that 49% of TDs do not expect to be working in the
field ten years from now. The chart also affirms that TDs do not view the position as a stepping stone to some other position or career: 68% of TDs now
view technical direction as a lifetime career versus 42% in 1987 (fig. 21).
Figure 23 graphs two important questions, "Are you satisfied with
your career choice?" and "Are you satisfied with your current position?"
Both questions generated very positive responses.
Figures 24 and 25 examine the number of positions held and years
employed in the current position. Figures 26-28 show additional duties and
employer perks. Figure 29 graphs the even split between those who feel they
were adequately prepared to take on the role of TD and those who don't.

croSS tabulation data Summary
Cross tabulation is a tool used by researchers to compare alternate answers from one question to alternate answers in another. It allows connections to be made between responses to different questions. For example,
in figure 30, a cross tab was run between the place of employment versus
salary range. You can see in the chart that a majority of TDs who make the
highest salary work in an educational environment. Cross tabs can yield
valuable information, but they can often result in irrelevant results. An
example : a cross tab was run between the question "Do you expect to be
a TD in 10 years?" and "What is your present age?" I expected the results
from that comparison to show that a majority of TDs closer to retirement
age answered No to their expectations of being in the field ten years from
now. What I found was that it didn't matter what age bracket the respondent was in, the No response was evenly distributed across all age groups.
Even though there is no correlation between the age of the respondent
and the No response, that result is still telling.
In 1987 and 1997, the results from the surveys were tabulated and
analyzed by the Wisconsin Survey Research Laboratory, a university-wide
facility designed to help faculty members with sample survey research and
analysis. The costs for tabulation were significant, and each cross tabulation they ran incurred an additional cost. In 1997, 41 cross tabs were run,
and only 19 of those yielded significant data, not a very cost-effective ratio.
In 2011 the cost factor in a study like this has nearly vanished. The survey was conducted online by the survey hosting website, Surveymonkey.com.
For a small flat fee, they will tabulate your survey results and run as many
cross tabs as requested. This allows the possibility of every question being
cross tabulated with every other question, a daunting amount of data to sort
through. To focus my efforts, I looked at the successful cross tabs from the
previous two surveys as a staring point. A majority of the comparisons did
not yield meaningful data.

these questions. Some of the questions here are also grouped to save
space. There is not necessarily a correlation between responses in the
same graph.
The question "Are you currently working as a Technical Director?"
was a cut-off question in the survey. Those who responded Yes were allowed to continue with the survey: 88.6% of those surveyed responded
Yes. Figure 20 charts the responses to four longevity related questions.
summer 2012

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