Demographics of a Jane-ite... who are you?

It’s no big surprise.  If you are reading this… you are a fan of Improvised Jane Austen and most likely a fan of the author herself, Jane Austen.  That’s a given.  But have you ever wondered what being a Jane Austen fan says about you?

Well first and foremost – let’s get the terminology right.  You my friend, are a Jane-ite.

And here’s a top 6 list of what being a fan of Jane Austen says about you. *

1) First of all, you are most likely a woman. In fact, 96% of us are females with a median age of 40.  Yay!   

2) And out of the females, 33% of us are 29 years old or younger, 35% of us are somewhere between 30-59, and 32% of us are 50 years young or older.

 

3) Chances are good that you are a career woman.  75% of us have or had careers, while 16% of us are students while 9% of us are home makers or moms.

Contrary to popular beliefs and assumptions, we are not all Librarians.   

Nor did we major in Literature (71% of us didn’t).   

The top 10 career fields are:

1. Education, Business Administration (Manager, HR, Secretary)
2.  Business Services/Worker/Retail
3. Library/Archivist
4. Finance
5. Science/Engineering
6. Writing/Publishing
7. Medical
8. Arts
9. Law
10. IT

Among Jane Austen enthusiasts, we have some very interesting careers from Judges, Lobbyists, U.S. Marines, Private Investigators, Zoo Keepers and Puppeteers.  Sure – we all knew there was a consortium of Jane Austen Puppeteer fans, but Lobbyists?  Go figure.

4) As far as education, you are most likely very educated.  81% of us that are at least 20 years old, have 4 year degrees.  Almost half of those have Masters degrees (33%) or Doctorates (12%).  And if you are an older Jane-ite, well then those that have doctorates rises to 25%.  Look at our big brains!

Now, I here is the link from where I got all this wonderful information – much thanks to Jeanne Kiefer for all the research and work she did to produce this 2008 survey and to Susan Allen Ford at JASNA for sharing and letting us borrow and link back to them.  I will close with a few pieces of information that I found particularly fun.

 

5) Coffee VS Tea - no surprises here unless we are at a Sunday morning Improvised Jane Austen rehearsal - where I think Coffee beats out Tea.

 

 

6) When it comes to pets, 66% of us have some sort of pet or animal companion.

 

6b) And out of those of us with beloved animal companions, Cats come down as the clear Jane-ite favorite at 51%. Dogs hold strong at 43% and well those who have Sugar Gliders or Turtles or Hedge Hogs come in at 6% in the "Other" category.

So there you have it.  And if you want to know more, check out the JASNA Persuasion Article.  Jeanne has a lot more information there with cool facts and tidbits about the rare and fascinating Jane-ite.

*Small Print:  And just so we are clear, this information did not come from make-things-up-off-the-top-of-my-head improviser me – all of this information is actually from a 2008 survey conducted by Jeanne Kiefer and published in a 2008 JASNA online publication called “Persuasion”.  The silly picture charts are all mine.