Who's reading The Conversation? Reader survey 2015 results

Our annual survey results are in. Thank you to the 10,700 of you who responded, it’s our largest response rate yet and your feedback helps us improve our service.

We’ve crunched the data, and wanted to share some insights.

About TC readers

• 56% are under 45
• 49% male and 51% female
• 83% have an undergraduate degree or higher
• 52% have an income of $100,000 or higher
• 80% are from outside of academia, indicating a general public audience
• 13% work in government, policy or public sector; 13% are teachers; 10% work in healthcare or medical sector
• 95% of readers would recommend TC.

About TC authors

• As a result of their article, 60% of authors are contacted for media follow up, 14% invited to speak at conferences, and 15% are contacted for research collaboration
• There are 22,000 registered authors worldwide.

Audience

• We have a monthly readership of 2.6 million users onsite each month, and reach of 23 million through creative commons republication.
• Over 19,000 sites worldwide republish our content. (Republishers include: ABC, The Guardian, SBS, Washington Post, Time, Mashable, Quartz, The Atlantic, I f-ing love science, RawStory, Mamamia, Business Insider, and more).

A note on methodology

The annual survey was open from 19-26 March 2015. It was emailed to our newsletter subscribers (then 82,000), available from our homepage, and promoted through social media. There were 10,722 total responses.

Through the survey, we also received thousands of comments, suggestions and feedback. Some we will implement, many are under consideration, and some we’d love to do but may have to wait a little longer. But all have been read and considered. Thanks again to everyone who took the time to participate and provide feedback.

There’s further information, including graphics and the full data set, here.