Survey methodology

  • The survey was open to all photographers working in the UK editorial markets, regardless of whether they were an NUJ or EPUK member.
  • The survey pool were initially drawn from the membership lists of EPUK (around 800 members) and NVJPhoto (around 100 members) since their membership were already pre-vetted to meet the survey criteria. This list had duplicates removed, and non-photographer members of EPUK (the three representatives of NUJ, BAPLA and AoP) were not asked to take part. Those EPUK members who currently had their mail settings turned to no-delivery were not invited to join the survey for privacy reasons.
  • Each of the survey pool were sent an individual email invitation to the survey being sent which could be used only once to avoid multiple votes. The survey could not be completed without an invitation to ensure respondents were editorial photographers.
  • Each of the survey pool was invited to ask any other working editorial photographers to also complete the survey. These photographers were asked to email a EPUK moderator for an invitation and for eligibilty checks. A similar invitation was made in another EPUK-run list, the EPUK Weekly News (1700 members) which has no eligibility requirements.
  • Members of the survey pool were invited to take part even if they no strong opinions on the issues, or did not feel they knew enough about the issues. Three of the key questions in the survey has options for “I don’t know enough about the issues” as well as a “neutral” opinion option.
  • The survey was conducted online at a third-party survey website – Surveymonkey between the evening of Friday 14th September and noon on Wednesday 19th September.
  • The survey was kept entirely anonymous, and no records of email address, IP address or other identifying information were kept with the data collected.
  • There was no discussion of the survey on either the EPUK or NVJPhoto lists for the duration of the survey.
  • An editorial decision was made to not cover a breaking story concerning the Drogheda Independent on the EPUK website while the survey was ongoing to avoid prejudicing the results.
  • In total there were 358 respondents. 7.8% of respondents started the survey but did not go all the way through to the final screen. Their partial responses have been kept in the survey.
  • Apart from EPUK and NVJPhoto, respondents included members of f8andbethere (16%), the British Press Photographers Association (19%), the Scottish Press Photographers Association (3%) the British Association of Journalists (2%), the Association of Photographers (8%), irishphotographers.ie (5.1%) and the BIPP (2.9%)
  • The final page of the survey asked for any other comments from the respondents which were pertinent to the survey. 112 respondents added comments, a representative sample of which have been added to the information shown here. They appear next to the questions felt most appropriate by the EPUK moderators, and are listed to indicate whether the comments were made by a current NUJ member or not.