Demographic profile of EAA members
The average age of respondents (#1; 44 years old) neatly corresponds with the 2018 membership report based on data from EAA membership database. Approx. 70% of EAA members are less than 50 years old. EAA membership is balanced gender-wise (#2). Residence of respondents (#3) is conditioned by the current Annual Meeting location, but the traditional strong representation of United Kingdom, Germany and the USA prevails.
Education
41% of respondents received their last academic title in the last five years (2014 – 2019), and a total of 64% of respondents received their last academic title in the last ten years (2009 – 2019) (#4). Most respondents‘ (37,2%) highest academic degree obtained (#5) is PhD., followed by Master degree (27,8%), which correlates with the high ratio of recently received last academic title and the fact that the majority of respondents (over 60%) are involved in academic work or are students (#6).
EAA membership
Full members comprise 67% of respondents, while students constitute 17,2% (#7). More than two thirds (65%) of respondents will renew their membership in 2020 (#20). Most respondents (78%) confirm to have filled in their EAA member’s profile on the web (#8), but some declare lacking the time to complete their profile or find it irrelevant (EAA is not a professional organisation).
Only a very small part of respondents (52) have served the EAA in any board / committee / community position (#9), which is confirmed by the overview of current and past EAA positions (communities not included) listing only 142 names (this is less than 1% of the total of 15478 names on the EAA database). However, nearly 10% of respondents (42 potential candidates) are willing to consider a position on the Executive board, and further 19% (or 80 individuals) would consider a position in another EAA board or committee (#10). Altogether 40% of respondents declared interest in being involved in EAA communities. About a third of the respondents are not interested in serving the EAA actively, mainly due to lack of time and other commitments, while others perceive the EAA as too bureaucratic and non-transparent (#11).
Very few respondents (6,6%) would be willing to make a small financial donation to the EAA while more than half (52,9%) will not commit to a donation (#19).
EAA service to members
The EAA should further develop (#12): 1) membership benefits (e.g. jobs service and funding opportunities, upcoming events overview, discounts offer), 2) smaller thematic conferences, and 3) EAA communities. Features that are still relevant to develop include: 4) membership service (i.e. web functions for membership renewal, registration for Annual Meeting, communication with members, etc.), 5) EAA Annual Meetings, 6) Active presence in European political arena and 7) publications incl. new titles. Other external / new activities of the EAA (Networking & active cooperation with organisations with similar goals, presence in social media, existing and new prizes and awards, on-line courses and training) are marked as unimportant by respondents.
Technically, the EAA should simplify (#17 and #18) 1) members’ engagement with EAA communities and provide more structured info about the communities, 2) Annual Meeting registration and 3) membership renewal.
Communication with EAA members
Members receive EAA information mostly through the web and mass emails (together 80%; #13), but would welcome the web to be more structured and detailed and the emails more frequent and more specific (#14). Large part of respondents (42%) declare not following any EAA social media (#15), and those who do are mainly on Facebook (44%) and Twitter (20%).
Members seem to be prepared for EJA on-line only publication (#16).
EAA Annual Meetings
The late August – early September dates suit 68,6% of respondents (#21). While over a half of the respondents have their Annual Meeting attendance paid by their institution or project / grant, still a large number (44,1%) claim to cover their attendance costs from their own personal funds (#26).
The three most relevant Annual Meeting aspects are: 1) Networking with members, 2) Academic content of sessions, 3) Possibility to present own research (#22). Publication of presentations ranked as 4th most desirable Annual Meeting feature, in the form of e-proceedings or publication of presentations in a repository (#23) - altogether 88,6% of respondents would consider uploading their Annual Meeting presentation full text in the EAA repository (#24). Filmed sessions do not seem to constitute a convenient form of presentation publication to large part of respondents.
The European Archaeology Fair (#25) provides 44% of respondents with insight into new publications and equipment, while others use it primarily for networking (25%). Respondents would welcome additional services (#28) such as childcare (50%) and tourist service stand (36%); but require also assistance for the elderly and disabled. The mobile app facility was generally well received (#29), but users identified a number of points to be improved (#30).
The respondents to the evaluation survey made the following recommendations: