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to 2002 Salary SurveyThe Huntsville/North Alabama chapter of the STC (Society for Technical Communication) has sponsored a yearly salary survey since 1999. The survey is sent to technical communication professionals with job functions such as writer, editor, graphic designer, web developer, and manager. Since 2001, this has been an online survey. This year, we posted the survey online from October 15 to October 24, 2003.
To solicit participation, we sent emails to 211 technical communicators in the Huntsville/North Alabama area describing this year’s survey and giving instructions to access the survey online. We also asked these people to encourage other technical communicators at their workplace to take the survey. The participants had the option of requesting a hard copy of the survey to mail in instead of participating online (only one chose the hard-copy option). Participants could also enter a contest to win either $100.00 or a membership in the STC ($140.00 value). This year's contest winner, from a drawing at the December 12 STC meeting, was Tama Cartensen, a translator and technical writer for SAIC.
Out of our total STC HNA membership of 62, we had responses from 37 members, or 60%.
Gender: Of the 105 usable respondents to the survey, the majority were women (70%). Women were similarly represented in the 2003 National STC Salary Survey (68%) and the 2003 Atlanta STC Salary Survey (65%).
Education: Of the 105 usable respondents,
percentages holding advanced degrees were lower than in 2002:
Survey Year Bachelor's
Master's
2002
61.0%
25.0%
2003
43.8%
21.9%
Demographic Analysis: (salaried respondents only, base = 83): The mean salary for entry-level respondents was $34,872, but this was for only three respondents. A third (33%) were in mid-level, non-supervisory positions, with a mean salary of $48,193.
Compensation Analysis (salaried respondents only, base = 83): Less than half of the full-time salaried respondents were writers (38%, 40 respondents), and reported a mean salary of $49,990 (median $48,568). The mean salary for those with the job function graphics (9 respondents) was $44,902 (median $43,500). The mean salary for editors (7 respondents) was $54,271 (median $57,000).