World Summit on Arts & Culture -Transforming People, Transforming Lives 14-18 June 2006, NewcastleGateshead, UK RECENT WORK IN THE FIELD OF CULTURAL STATISTICS

World Summit on Arts & Culture -Transforming People, Transforming Lives

14-18 June 2006, NewcastleGateshead, UK

RECENT WORK IN THE FIELD OF CULTURAL STATISTICS IN SLOVENIA

Brigita Lipovšek

Ministry of Culture

Republic of Slovenia



Success in statistical analysis depends on continually juxtaposing the real world and the conceptual world. We use concepts to guide our understanding of the real world; we use the real world to steer us to better concepts and increased future understanding.

Samuel A. Schmitt*

*in: Measuring Uncertainty: An Elementary Introduction to Bayesian Statisticshttp://ihome.cuhk.edu.hk/~b400559/proverbs.html



Content of the presentation:

• Revision of data collecting, analysing and publishing

– revision on the national level– revision within the Ministry of Culture

• Searching in the field of cultural indicators



I. REVISION OF DATA COLLECTING, ANALYSING AND PUBLISHING



Situation before revision

Historical view of cultural statistics in Slovenia

Most important data producers in cultural field in Slovenia

a) public sector

b) private sector



Some main problems

• No official communication between institutions• Mmultiplying of collecting of statistical data• Some important data not collected at all • Data incomparability• Irregular publishing of statistical data • Different fields differ regarding the availability of data• The dynamics of publishing • No central forum for cultural statistics



REVISION ON THE NATIONAL LEVEL



Main principles

• Identification of the main actors in cultural statistics in Slovenia

• Establishing of close co-operation between these actors

• Rationalisation of resources

• Reaching a consensus of main actors regarding the main modifications



Main principles

• Building on previous achievements

• Graduallity

• Methodological harmonisation of data collection in Slovenia

• Permanent care for international harmonisation

• Taking into consideration Slovene specialities



Main questions we posed to ourselves

• What data do we really need?

• What should be the nature of data collection?

• Do we need the data once a year or once in three years?

• Can we get this data from the existing evidences?



Main questions we posed to ourselves

• Does some institution – beside Statistical Office - collect these data regularly and we can presume that it would

collect them also in the future?

• Will information provider be able to respond to the question easily?

• Is the number of questions on questionnaire low enough that information provider would be willing to answer?

• Are the questions clear enough?



Problems we were facing and some solutions

• Lack of co-operation.

• Multiplying of data collection.

• Incompatibility of present data with official evidences of Statistical Office and of Ministry of Culture

• Double counting



Problems we were facing and some solutions

• Frequency of data collection

• Question: to collect data on art season basis or on yearly basis

• The problem of data quality in case the data would be collected by the institutions that are financially dependent on the data presented



REVISION WITHIN THE MINISTRY OF CULTURE

• Initiatives and reason for start

• Overall view

• What kind of data the Ministry collects




• None of the Ministry’s evidence were connected to one another, so the same data were registered for several times

• Methodology of data collection was not harmonized between sectors

• Public registers and evidences of the Ministry were made in different computer applications (Excel, Word, Access) or even on cardboard-boxes




• The majority of evidences were accessible to one or two persons only

• The manner of data collection and the extent of data available from different cultural fields differed tremendously



Scopes of work

• Organisational revision of work on statistical data collection

• Methodological harmonization of data collection

• Gradual transmission of public registers, sector and cross-sector evidences into the information base of the Ministry of Culture.

• Transmission of reporting to the Ministry of Culture by public institutions through internet – testing project



Future work in Slovenia in the field of data gathering and publishing

• National level

• Within the Ministry for Culture



II. CULTURAL INDICATORS



Reasons for growing importance of cultural indicators in Slovenia

Overall cultural indicators and indicators on individual cultural fields



Some problems connected to cultural indicators

• We do not have internationally harmonized general cultural indicator (maybe 2 or 3, but no more)

• We do not have a set (10-50) of internationally harmonized conventional main cultural indicators

• With the exeption of some fields international harmonisation of data is still at the beginning

• We lack the indicator that would present cultural impact on development



Some problems connected to cultural indicators

• Problem of so called »cultural indicators« in strategic and operational documents that are not indictors at all: “cultural indicators” cited in the documents are often in fact

- statistical data, - policy goals, - policy provisions - or indicators are defined in such a way that regular

producing of data for their calculation is impossible



Some part solutions before relevant indicators are developed

• Lack of general indicatorPossibility:- Allocated assets of households for cultural activities - the

share of average annual assets of households allocated for cultural activities; with regard to the time span and the comparison with regard to other EU countries (here we got only aggregate data on culture and recreation)

- Time used for cultural activities - time used by women and men aged 10 or over for cultural activities: share of average time per day; comparison with regard to time span and other EU countries



Some part solutions before relevant indicators are developed

Lack of indicator that would present cultural impact on development

Possibility*: Multiplier of production (1,6)Multiplier of value added (1,5)Multiplier of employment (1,6)

*a research made by the Centre for International Competitiveness (calculation of multipliers for the year 2000)



Not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted.

Albert Einstein*

* Tom Healy, Conference on Knowledge Economy – Challenges for measurement; Eurostat, Luxembourg 8 – 9 December 2005

Documents

World Summit on Arts & Culture -Transforming People, Transforming Lives 14-18 June 2006, NewcastleGateshead, UK RECENT WORK IN THE FIELD OF CULTURAL STATISTICS