PAA Membership Survey Highlights

February 18, 2011

PAA Membership Survey, 2010

In the late spring of 2010, the PAA membership committee, with the assistance of PAA member

Leora Lawton, Tech Society Research, undertook an internet-based survey of all current and past members for whom emails were available from the PAA membership database. A total of 1,805 current and past members responded to the electronic survey. The response rate was much higher for current than past members, as expected (58% vs. 15%). Thank you to everyone who took the time to participate in the survey!

Survey Result Highlights:

The Membership:

• A majority of current members fall in the 25‐44 (57%) age group and are employed full‐time (68%). Approximately one quarter of current members are employed in a non‐academic setting. About two thirds of members pay their own dues.

Ties to Demography:

•  Most respondents first joined PAA as graduate students.
• Members come from a variety of academic disciplines, but close to half identify demography as their primary field.

Benefits of PAA:

• #1: The Annual Meeting! The annual meeting is held in high esteem by most respondents. Over three quarters of the respondents had attended at least one meeting in the previous 5 years, with 54% attending the 2010 meeting in Dallas. Of those who attended the Dallas meeting, 91% were satisfied or very satisfied with it.
•  The most common reasons for attending the annual meeting were: to present research, to see friends and network professionally and because of the relevance of the meeting content.
• Subscription to the journal Demography is also viewed as an important benefit of belonging to PAA. Respondents who identified as demographers, economists or sociologists viewed the journal as a more important benefit than those who identified with other disciplines.

Concerns of Lapsed Members

• The high cost of membership fees and employers who do not pay the fees were the two most common reasons lapsed members gave for not renewing their PAA membership.
• Close to 40% did not renew because they had only joined to be on the annual meeting program.

Observations

The quality of the annual meeting for research and professional opportunities is a significant factor in members’ satisfaction with PAA. The new rules in effect for the 2011 meetings, allowing nonmembers to register at a higher fee than members pay, may affect PAA membership renewals. However, the survey results suggest that the new rules will not necessarily reduce participation in the annual meetings.