Brief Summary of 2007 STC Salary Survey Results

The Huntsville/North Alabama chapter of the STC (Society for Technical Communication) has sponsored a yearly salary survey since 1999. Dr. Rose Norman, Chapter Employment Chair, administers the survey and survey analysis. The participants are those listed in the North Alabama STC employment notification database, which includes chapter STC members, job seekers, and many non-members. Participants are asked to forward the survey to any technical communicator. Since 2001, this has been an online survey. This year we posted the survey online from February 26 to March 7, 2008.

Methods.  To solicit participation, we sent emails to a distribution list of 246 technical communicators in the Huntsville/North Alabama area describing this year’s survey and giving instructions to access the survey online. The participants had the option of downloading a hard copy of the survey to mail in instead of participating online (no one chose the hard-copy option). Participants could also enter a contest to win either $100.00 or a membership in the STC ($150.00 value). This year's winner, drawn from 60 entries at the April 8, 2008, chapter meeting, was Sarah Mauldin, a technical writer at Intergraph.  

Results.  We received usable surveys from 103 people (surveys that did not report gross annual salary had to be discarded).  We received 99 usable responses from full-time workers.  Most analysis is based on these 99 respondents.

Analysis of all Responses (103 total, both full-time and part-time): 

HNA STC Membership: 31 (31%) were STC HNA members (this is 50% of our membership as of February 2008).
Gender:  70 were women (70%),  30 men (30%, down from 37% men in 2006)
 

Analysis of Full-time Salaried Responses (99 total)

Gender: The majority were women (66%).  Women were similarly represented in the 2006 National STC Salary Survey (63%). Surveys from men declined to 30 from 36 responses in 2006.