Creative Writing
- Throughout the 1982–2022 time period, the share of American adults who engaged in creative writing was small and quite stable, ranging from 6 to 7% over those four decades (Indicator V-07a).
- Across all four decades, the nation’s youngest adults (ages 18–24) were consistently the most likely to engage in creative
Source: National Endowment for the Arts, Survey of Public Participation in the Arts. Data accessed via the Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research Data Archive. Data analyzed and presented by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Humanities Indicators (www.humanitiesindicators.org).
The data on which this indicator is based are from the National Endowment for the Arts’ Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (SPPA). In 2012 the wording of the SPPA creative writing item changed slightly. Whereas from 1982 to 2008, respondents were asked if they did creative writing other than for school or work, in 2012 the question asked respondents to indicate whether they had done creative writing at all, regardless of the context.
