As past research from the Academy’s Humanities Indicators (HI) project demonstrated, the public engages with some regularity in a wide range of humanistic activities, but a recent survey administration (for a new Academy project on cultural organizations and their communities) provides some comparison to arts activities, as well. The most recent round of the survey was administered in June 2024, using NORC’s AmeriSpeak survey panel, and asked how often Americans had engaged in a range of activities over the previous three months.
U.S. adults were most likely to engage at least sometimes in history-focused activities such as watching a show with historical content and researching the history of something of interest online, followed by reading fiction. But reading fiction was the most likely to be engaged in very often by members of the public (23% in the survey; Figure 1) followed by watching shows with historical content (21%), researching historical topics of interest (17%), and reading nonfiction (14%).
Beneath the topline numbers, the survey found that 45–59-year-olds, those with an annual household income of at least $100,000, and those who had earned at least a bachelor’s degree were the most likely to report engaging very often with humanities activities.
Conversely, the survey also found that solid majorities of the population rarely or never engage with most of the activities in the survey (Figure 2). Americans were least likely to attend dance performances, with 58% of adults reporting that they had not engaged in this activity in the previous three months, and nearly 20% reporting that they rarely did so. The 2022 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (SPPA) from the National Endowment for the Arts found a similar lack of engagement with dance, noting an overall decline in activity from 2017 to 2022. But more than half of American adults rarely or never engaged in a majority of the activities in the survey, including attendance at theater performances (65%), engaging in religious text study (65%), and visiting the web sites of cultural institutions to take a virtual tour or explore their collections (64%).
Similar to other surveys, including the SPPA, the HI survey found substantial racial and ethnic differences in the levels of engagement with specific arts- and humanities-related activities (Figure 3). White Americans, for example, were substantially more likely than Black or Hispanic Americans to read fiction often, while Black Americans were substantially more likely than other races to engage in religious text study. Generally, Black and Hispanic Americans were more likely to read sometimes or rarely than Americans of other races.
However, Black Americans showed higher levels of engagement with other arts and humanities activities. They were the most likely to attend dance performances, engage in the study of religious texts, and to think about or research further the ethical aspects of a choice in their lives, among several other activities.
In contrast, White Americans showed not only lower levels of engagement than Black and Hispanic Americans with several of the activities in this survey; they also showed lower engagement than American adults in general. White Americans were significantly less likely than the general population to have listened to a podcast, radio show, or TED talk on an arts or humanities subject. White Americans also reported—at higher rates than Black Americans, Hispanic Americans, and the average for the population as a whole—that they never visited art museums, art festivals, or art appreciation events. They were also the least likely to report having researched the ethical aspects of a choice in their lives.
Gender also proved to be an important differentiator for engagement (Figure 4). The activities that women were the most likely to report engaging in were often the very activities men were most likely to report never engaging. This was true for visiting an art museum, art festival, or art appreciation event; for visiting a library; and for attending a concert. In general, women were more likely than men to engage in activities that centered on the arts, such as attending a theater or dance performance or watching a music or theater performance online or on television.
History-focused activities were more popular among men than women. Men were more likely than women to watch a show with historical content and to look up information about history, philosophy, literature, or the arts to gain a deeper understanding of the subject. A greater share of men answered that they engaged with this activity very often, while a greater share of women reported that they never engaged in this kind of humanities research.
Similar to the SPPA, the HI survey found that women were more likely to read overall, regardless of genre, than men. The HI survey also looked at the type of reading, finding that women were more likely to read fiction at least sometimes than men while finding little difference between the genders in the reading of nonfiction. (The SPPA also found that women were more likely than men to participate in reading groups.)
Age also proved to be salient in predicting engagement with arts and humanities activities, but with greater variation within and between cohorts (Figure 5). For every type of engagement asked about in this survey, adults age 30–44 were the least likely to report they never participated in these activities, although relatively few of them engaged in the activities at least often. In comparison, adults age 45–59 were the most likely of any age group to participate in any of the surveyed activities very often, while adults age 60+ and adults age 18–29 had the highest levels of engagement at least sometimes. Adults age 60+ also reported never engaging with these activities at the highest rates of any age group.
Adults age 18–44 were more likely to have read fiction or nonfiction and to have visited a library than adults age 45+. While adults age 60+ reported reading fiction and nonfiction very often at similar rates to other adults, they were the most likely by far to have engaged in religious text study very often. Additionally, adults age 60+ were the most likely to have reported watching a show with historical content very often, the most popular activity across all adults surveyed.
Generally, adults with an annual household income over $100,000 were the most likely to engage in the surveyed activities, and adults with an annual household income of greater than $30,000 but less than $60,000 were the least likely (Figure 6). Adults with an annual household income of at least $60,000 but less than $100,000 were close behind those in the highest income bracket in levels of engagement but were also the least likely to report never engaging with an activity. Adults in other income brackets were about even in their lack of engagement with these activities.
As might be expected due to the cost of such activities, Americans with the highest annual household incomes were generally more likely than those in lower income categories to engage in history- and art-related outings often or very often. Their engagement was measurably higher in four of the six activities that could be considered outings: visiting an art museum, art festival, or art appreciation event; visiting a history museum or history site; visiting a library; and attending a concert. Lower-income Americans were more likely to attend the remaining outing-type activities, theater and dance performances, often or very often. At-home activities such as reading, watching television shows, watching music or theater online, listening to podcasts, and research-related activities were the most popular among those with the highest annual household incomes.
American adults who had earned at least a bachelor’s degree were more likely to engage with humanities activities than adults who had not (Figure 7). Adults with college degrees were most likely to engage often in activities centered around reading, research, and interacting with cultural institutions. These activities included reading fiction and nonfiction, researching the history of something of interest in their lives, and visiting art and history museums, among others. Americans with at least a bachelor's degree were the least likely to report rarely or never engaging with an activity, while those with no high school diploma, some college, or an associate’s degree were the most likely.
Like previous rounds of the engagement survey, the most recent June 2024 version highlights the ways the public continues to engage or not engage with the humanities and arts activities surrounding us. Each administration of the survey provides new information that can be useful in comparing the public’s engagement across gender, racial, educational, and financial lines, as well as across time. The second part of this two-part series compares the results of this and previous rounds of the survey.
The most recent SPPA covering a twelve-month period ending in July 2022 found a drop in public engagement with all forms of cultural activity since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the June 2024 HI survey seems to confirm that finding for a wider range of humanistic activities, including arts- and humanities-related outings, independent research into arts and humanities subjects, and engagement with arts and humanities media through television, podcasts, and books.
Part 2 of this report assesses how these findings compare to earlier surveys.