Who Are We? Results of the 1997 Membership Survey News & Views Feature Article

by Alan Muirhead Originally published in News & Views July, 1997 issue. Copyright 1997 STC-Philadelphia Metro Chapter. For permission to reprint this article, contact the Managing Editor.

What can we say about the members of STC-PMC? This article presents results from the survey that was mailed in the January issue of News & Views. Eighty-nine members returned their surveys out of a mailing of 434, for a 21% return. Thanks! That seems to me to be a good enough sampling so that the results that follow should be a valid description of just who we in the PMC really are. Basic demographics First, let's look at all 434 members. Geographically, they span the tri-state area. Sixty-seven percent of the mailing addresses are in Pennsylvania, 18% are in New Jersey, and 13% in Delaware (plus 2% in Maryland and New York). In Figure 1, the circles show the locations of zip codes, and the size of the circles is proportional to the number of chapter members with mailing addresses in each zip code. No wonder we can't find a single meeting place that's convenient for everyone! Figure 1. Membership by zip code (area map from http:\\city.net, ©1997 GeoSystems Global Corp.) Of the total chapter, 64% are female and 36% male, essentially the same ratio as reported for the STC as a whole in a recent discussion in the TECHWR-L newsgroup. Many are new members, with more than half the chapter belonging to STC fewer than 5 years (Figure 2). Figure 2. Years as STC member Work and experience Next, let's turn to the survey. Eighty-nine percent of the 89 respondents said they work full-time; 73% are in permanent positions. Only 3% said they were currently seeking work, and 8% work part-time. Nearly half the respondents have more than ten years experience, as illustrated in Figure 3. Compare the many years of experience with the fewer years as members of STC. Figure 3. Years of experience Given the years of experience, it's not surprising that 61% of respondents consider themselves to be at a senior level and 36% at mid-level. Slightly more than 21% are in supervisory positions. Most (62%) respondents work for large companies or corporations, while nearly 20% are self-employed. Just about half work at companies with three or fewer technical communicators, but 22% work at companies with more than ten technical communicators. Activities and skills In the survey, I asked that everyone use percentages to show how they divide their time among various activities. Unfortunately, not everyone did. So in the following, I've had to simply count up the number of responses in each category. Since many people checked off more than one category, this means that total percentages are usually over 100%. For example, when asked what subject areas they work in, 69% of all respondents indicated that they produce technical communications having to do with computer software (Figure 4). But many of them indicated that they work also in engineering, and hardware, and biotech/pharmaceutical, and . . . (you get the idea). Figure 4. Subject areas The types of documents and other communications we produce also emphasize software (Figure 5). Although documentation is the most common, whether it's for software or hardware, about a third of the respondents write technical articles and/or marketing communications. Figure 5. Types of communications I asked about job function and skills to get a sense of what we did in addition to creating things with words. The answer: we do a lot, but everything is secondary to writing (Figure 6). Our jobs are mostly writing and editing, with managing coming in well behind. The "other" responses included project management and training. Figure 6. Job function Our skills? Pretty much what you'd expect, since most of us have to edit, proof, and format what we and our fellow writers produce (Figure 7). Figure 7. Skills How do we publish our work? More and more of us (76%) produce soft copy (online, Web, etc.), while 93% produce hard copy. Computers We've heard a lot about how well Apple is (or is not) doing and that their biggest market share is in the graphic arts. Technical writers appear to help Apple's share too: 27% percent of respondents use Macs, alone or in combination with other computers, although 85% use IBM PCs and clones, and 22% use mainframes (of those who identified brands, four said they used VAX, two each Sun and HP, and one IBM). It's interesting that so many use more than one type of platform (Figure 8). Figure 8. Computer usage Almost everyone has a computer both at work (96%) and at home (90%). Email at work is the rule (91%), but access to the World Wide Web at work is not as widespread (73%). At home, just about as many people have email (63%) as Web (61%). The Web is popular. Nearly 35% of the respondents use it more than ten hours per week, and 46% use it between three and ten hours per week. Only 8% have not been on the Web. The PMC web site isn't quite so popular (or at least it wasn't as of January). More than 16% had not visited it, and 40% had only been there between one and three times. But 18% said they'd accessed the site "lots." Tools One of the respondents expressed concern about the emphasis in the survey on what "tools" people used, saying that tools are incidental to the skill and art of producing good documentation. While granting the point, I still maintain that to stay current and competitive in the field of technical communication-or at least to get your resume read-it's helpful to know what tools are used. Sure, if I know Word Mangler I can probably learn PhraseMaker, but if everyone else is using PhraseMaker, I'd better start thinking about catching up. A clear "winner" among all the tools was Microsoft Word for word processing, with 88% of the 85 who responded on this question using Word. WordPerfect was far behind at 38%, with no others over 10%. In desktop publishing, the results were more mixed. Of the 54 respondents, 52% used Pagemaker, 33% FrameMaker, 22% QuarkXpress, 15% Interleaf, and 13% "other" (mostly Ventura). RoboHELP dominated online help tools, with 56% of the 43 responders using it. Doc-to-Help was mentioned by 19% and HDK, 9%. Forehelp had several write-ins. In Web tools, FrontPage had the most users (10 of 33, or 30%), but HotDog Pro, PageMill, Web Edit, and several home-growns were in the 10% range. CorelDraw was the most popular illustration package (20 of 50, or 40%). Adobe PhotoShop had 32%, and Paint Shop Pro (see the software review on this web site) had 28%. Visio was mentioned several times as an "other." New tools The survey gave everyone the opportunity to write in the kinds of tools that they would like to learn next. As you might expect, many people had unique choices. However, there were commonalities and themes among the various choices. HTML or various Web tools such as FrontPage were identified by 30% (14 of 47 responding) as the next tool they wanted to learn. Desktop publishing, FrameMaker, and PageMaker were mentioned by 18%. Help authoring, illustration, and visual programming (Visual Basic and Java) were each mentioned by 13% of the respondents. In addition, the survey asked for the names of favorite tools that were not listed in any of the other categories. Excel and PowerPoint were nominated six times, Authorware three times, and a host of others once each. A few STC chapters have active mentoring programs, in which more experienced members help others learn or cope with new technologies, so I included a question to gauge interest in mentoring within our chapter. Admittedly, we've never talked about what this activity might entail, and the amount of interest was relatively small. But sixteen people did express willingness to help. We may return to this as a chapter activity. Membership in STC I know why I joined STC and why I think it's important, but how about everyone else? The survey offered seven reasons why someone might belong to STC and asked people to rank them. I've looked at the results in two different ways: number of first-place votes and total score. For the score, I simply assigned seven points to a first place vote, six to a second, and so on. As you can see in Table 1, the national publications, the opportunity for networking, and the local newsletter are the strongest reasons for joining STC. (No, I didn't rig the voting on the newsletter; it simply got a lot of second- and third-place votes.) Table 1. Reasons for joining STC Reason First place votes Score publications 36 450 networking 28 371 newsletter 19 413 local chapter 11 210 resume 10 188 national meeting 8 163 local PICs 4 150 Meetings, whether national, chapter, or local PIC, were not cited as frequently. And it was reassuring to see that merely having the STC on a resume was less important than the knowledge and networking that STC offers. Only a few people wrote in additional reasons for joining STC. These included the job hotline, "staying current," and the (national) Environmental, Safety and Health Communication PIC. Local meetings The survey concluded with questions about the cost, location, timing, and topics for chapter meetings. Thirteen respondents thought they might attend more meetings if they cost less than $15. [But don't forget our zero cost option-come for the meeting, not for dinner.] Six people voted for meetings on Saturday, and three for meetings in the afternoon during work hours. Fifty-one expressed opinions on meeting locations; Table 2 lists the most common site requests. Table 2. Most requested meeting locations Where Requests Delaware 11 New Jersey 9 Malvern 9 Center City 7 Bucks County 5 No wonder we can't find a meeting place that makes everyone happy! (Do you sense a recurring theme?) The request for future meeting topics confirmed the diversity of PMC. Responses ranged from HTML and programming to software and hardware demos to "broaden beyond computers." Several identified the future of technical communication as a topic. And several expressed a desire for meetings that were in greater depth, given by experts in their fields, "so I can learn something." I think this survey has given us a lot of good information, and I expound a little bit more on what we can do with it in my editorial. If you have any comments on the usefulness or appropriateness of the survey, pro or con, please feel free to send them to me at muirhead@voicenet.com. What questions should we ask next time? Thanks again to all who responded!

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Last updated: July 23, 1997 (rst)