https://www.equity.org.uk/documents/2013-equity-membership-survey-summary/

What implications might this have on actors entering the profession?

1. I believe that the information recorded in the survey may be eye opening for for naive actors entering the profession, especially students. One main implication on students will be the loss of Government loans and grants from University, and entering a profession where the majority of workers earn less then 5K a year.
2. It is also clear that most workers brand as Actors and so entering the profession having not developed any skills in other areas of performance may hamper the amount of opportunities that the actor can audition for.
3. It is also aparent that most actors participated in less that 10 weeks worth of work in one year. Therefore any actor entering the profession should be prepared to have other work in order to live. This could be a huge implication as finding a job that is flexible to fit around auditions can be hard and whilst starting out in the profession we aren’t in a place where we can refuse audition opportunities.

Consider the limitations of survey research such as this.  Are there any surprises in this data and can you see how there might be some flaws in this data? It is important to learn to look critically at quantitative data to work out where there might be bias or where the sample might skew the results. That is not to say that there isn’t value in this data, but it is also useful to consider the strengths and weaknesses when considering how valid data is. 

1. The survey has only been answered by 3,812 members, many of which skipped a lot of questions. This is in no way reflective of the amount of members Equity represent, only the ones who could be bothered to fill out the questionnaire.
2. The majority of the questions are multiple choice, therefore not allowing much opinion to be had.
3. The choice language in some sections may skew opinion (The questions relating the nude casting are a prime example of this).
4.  Those aged 30 and below only make up 15.8% of the data, therefore the data isn’t completely useful to young students like myself entering the profession.