The people who run your average arts organization would love to have more information on their audience. They’d love to know why people attend, why they don’t attend, where they come from and what they think of the arts-going experience. That information would be, as the research industry saying goes, "nice to know."However, finding the time and money to conduct a research project is difficult when most of your day is spent fighting to stay solvent. With their budgets a patchwork of grants, endowments, donations and ticket revenues, most local art galleries, dance troupes or theater companies are more concerned with keeping their doors open.But as their potential audiences shrink and funding comes under fire, "nice to know" is quickly turning into "need to know." In addition to competing with each other for a slice of our leisure time, arts organizations must battle the likes of the Internet, video stores, household chores and the twin Goliaths of sloth and apathy. Plus, monetary support for the arts from public, private and government sources has come under fire as various factions wage the good art/bad art debate.What’s a research-minded arts institution to do? One solution is to find strength in numbers. That’s the approach taken by the organizations served by two arts councils in Raleigh, N.C.Earlier this year, the United Arts Council of Raleigh and Wake County (United Arts) and the Durham Arts Council conducted a joint research project called "Cultural Attendance in the Triangle: A Market Study," on behalf and with the cooperation of 34 arts and cultural organizations in North Carolina’s Durham, Orange and Wake counties.The Triangle, encompassing everything from farm communities to larger cities like Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill, is a rapidly growing, diverse area that’s home to a number of colleges and universities and several high-tech companies.The need to conduct such a study was identified in 1991, after...