Job Satisfaction Among Technical Directors In The Performing Arts

Job satisfaction is often discussed among technical directors. Long hours, low pay, inadequate budgets, and stress are subjects familiar to all TD's. But how common are they? 

In 1987, Lisa Aitken and Dennis Dorn conducted a survey to try and answer those questions. Ten years later I received the survey to see what (if anything) had changed. Both surveys returned mixed results. While degrees of dissatisfaction were present, those feelings were far from universal. When comparing the results, some patterns started to emerge, but with only two survey samples there wasn't enough data to draw definitive conclusions. 

In 2011, I conducted a third installment of the TD Satisfaction Survey. The results were presented at the 2012 USITT convention in Long Beach, CA and published in the Summer 2012 edition of Theatre Design and Technology. All three surveys were sponsored by the USITT Technical Production Commission.  A copy of that article is linked below. 

The raw data is available to USITT members upon request.