Cultural Learning: Empirical Indices

The empirical indices of cultural learning have been analysed through questionnaires in the Northern Great Plain. We have decided on a questionnaire for the institution, which contains a general section, a section on personal cultural learning and a special list of questions related to the three partial areas (community culture, media, sports).

Therefore, actually three questionnaires were made, the questions of which overlapped to 60%, and they contained 40% of specific questions.

Structure of the questionnaire:

I. General questions on organisation (approximately the same in all three questionnaires): the generation, past, system of activities, human resources, infrastructure, financing, of the organisation and its network of relationships with other organisations, etc.

II. Questions on personal cultural learning (approximately the same in all three questionnaires): provision of opportunities for non-formal learning, the number of non-formal learning events, users of non-formal learning, the significance of informal learning in the organisation, etc.

III. Questions specific to the institution (different in the three questionnaires, analysing the specific functions and content indicators of the individual institutions):

For community cultural institutions e.g. the form of programmes, number of participants, number of people purchasing tickets, the range of free programmes, etc.

For media e.g. types of programmes, air time, forms of online publication, forms of support, criteria for selecting programmes, audience figures, etc.

For sports associations e.g. the number of members, users of the range of programmes, criteria for selecting programmes, recruiting supporters, etc.

The three circles of organisations to examine include a large number of institutions on a national level, thus there is a need to mark off areas and thematics. Areal delineation results in a focus on the Northern Great Plain region. When choosing thematics we chose types of organisation providing multiple forms of personal learning in all three fields: in the field of cultural institutions community cultural institutions, in the field of media television stations, in the field of sports organisations hiking associations. In the case of individual types of organisation we strove to reach a minimum of 30%

sampling rate, which we managed to exceed, altogether contacting 34% of the institutions in the three fields in the Northern Great Plain region (Table 4.3).

Table 4.3.

Institutional population and the number of institutions analysed (pc)

Type of

 For community cultural institutions Cultural Statistics (EMMI 2012, kultstat.emmi.gov.hu)

 For televisions the data of National Media and News Authority (www.mediatanacs.hu)

 We have no national data on the field of hiking associations, unfortunately, but The National Association of Sports Societies provides relatively reliable data on organisations in operation (http://www.sosz.hu/kozvetlen-tagsag).

** Source: findings of own empirical research.

First let us review the main data of organisations analysed. 40% of the 112 organisations examined had already been in operation before the change of regime, which is due to the high rate of community cultural institutions. 26% of the organisations were set up between the change of regime (1990) and the new millennium, while in the new millennium 34% of them were established. Thus the sample contains both organisations operating for several decades and new ones. 35%

of the organisations responding to our questionnaire are based in Debrecen, whereas no other prominent settlement is represented in the sample. The organisations are divided among three counties. As regards the three sectors 48% of the organisations examined are state owned, 16% are private enterprises and 36% NGOs.

Efficient figures may be acquired on the size of the organisations and the tasks to be handled by the number and composition of the employees. We have analysed all employees in the 112 institutions and their average figures by institution. Altogether 1775 people are employed in the 112 institutions (Table 4.3.), of whom 967 have a degree (54.5%). The rate of managers is also high: in the 112 institutions 253 people (14% of the total staff) are in managerial positions.

Table 4.4.

It is clear that the organisations have average human resources, and as for size they are of medium size, as on average they have employees above 10 persons, but work with a staff below 50 (Table 4.5).

Table 4.5.

Total number of employees in institutional average (persons) Number of employees (institutional average) Professional

employees

Administrative employees

Technical employees

Total

Full time 10.8 3.6 3.6 18

Part time 6.7 1.3 2.7 10.7

Total 17.5 4.9 6.3 28.7

Source: own empirical research.

Human resource supply is improved by the fact that volunteers are employed in 54%

of the organisations. At the time of the survey altogether 841 persons were being employed, which is an average of 15 volunteers for each institution.

In the second part of our analysis we review some results of the examined institutions supporting personal learning. The learning events surveyed with regard to the organisations included clubs, trainings, presentations, exhibitions, forums and outings.

Of these all were included in great numbers in the case of the organisations examined, even forums, which were indicated as the rarest, were organised on 416 occasions by the 112 organisations. The largest number of learning events were produced in clubs (5,875 learning events), which is also due to the fact that these are regular activities;

that is, if a club is held once a week on average, that can be regarded as approx. 50 learning events a year. The number of presentations, which can be defined as learning events in the narrower sense, too, is the highest most prominent figure, and the practical form of those, trainings, were also represented in high numbers (564 events).

Learning events for the 112 organisations totalled 11,027, which corresponds to an average of approximately one hundred (98.5) learning events for each organisation (Figure 4.2). Thus we can say that these institutions and organisations are extremely active in organising learning.

Figure 4.2.