Submission Demographics (July 2019–April 2020)

The Arsenika submissions portal includes an optional demographics form for people to fill out. The following data was collected between July 2019 and April 2020. Over that time, I received 1,650 submissions of prose & poetry and 111 responses to the demographic survey. As writers can submit multiple pieces for consideration, it’s unclear exactly how many individuals submitted during that time. (If anyone knows how to count this easily on Moksha, please let me know.)

Some of the questions had freeform text fields rather than multiple choice options for the reply. For ease of analysis, I’ve grouped together some of the responses under umbrella terms. Unfortunately, Excel’s pivot table function didn’t allow me to count a single response as belonging to multiple categories (unless I’ve missed a feature, which is very likely). As I’d prefer to keep data confidential—some respondents were very specific with their answers—I will not be including the detailed response breakdown. I apologize if there’s any misrepresentation in my methodology.

In the following tables, the top response (or top two responses, if there are more than four options) is bolded and italicized.

Age

The average age of respondents was 40 years old (median 39, mode 38). The youngest respondent was 11 years old, and the oldest was 79 years old.

Gender

Personal Pronouns

Country of Residence

Nationality

Racial/Ethnic Background

I’ve simplified the results by assigning ethnicities to races based on how the United States categorizes them, as the bulk of publishing data on representation originates from the US (where I’m also based). The category “Caucasus/Northern Africa/Levant” groups together some ethnicities that are ambiguously considered White.

Do you identify as LGBTQIA+?

Are you disabled?

Is English your primary language?

If English isn’t your primary language, what language(s) do you typically use?

Are you in poverty and/or working poor?

Do you practice any religion(s) and/or folk traditions?

What is your highest level of education?

Are you currently in the military or a veteran?

Is writing your main occupation? If not, what is?

All data from the survey has now been deleted from Airtable, my hard drive, and the cloud. Please feel free to leave comments and suggestions below. Comments are moderated.