2-99 (June 1999) by Johan Näsström Special Aspects Sweden

During the last year a member survey was made by FTI, the Swedish Society for Techniocal Communication as a follow up to a survey made in 1991. Some 25% answered of the 400+ FTI members. Here follows a selection of the results along with some comments:

The member share of rather new technical communicators has decreased somewhat compared to the 1991 survey.

Compared to the 1991 survey, the number of employed has decreased, but the self-employed consultant share has increased to a large extent.

Only 6% think they will be doing anything else in the future but being a TC. From another question in the survey, it shows that 95% are satisfied or very satisfied with the job.

In the 1991 year survey one of the questions was: "Do you work with a mainframe, personal computer or typewriter?". (The answers then were: Mainframe 20%, Personal computer 75% and Typewriter 8%.)

This time, only seven years later, that question was superfluous and was replaced with the following:

In the 1991 survey, Macintosh had a share of 61%, now reduced to 28%, but many have access to both Mac and PC. It is also worth metioning that, according to the survey, 96% uses word processing, 80% layout programs. 98% has access to e-mail and 93% uses Internet. And as much as 82% of the member are storing documents in pdf-format, which now can be seen as a de-facto standard.  

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