Science Museums Exceling . . . but Some Not-So-Good News Too

In our last post, we started sharing results of our recent research on visitors to science-based museums.  Today, we will look more carefully at where they excel, and where they may be falling a bit short.

 

The good news for science-based museums.

 

Approximately ¾ of respondents believe that the museums have “good exhibits,” a strong response for this core offering of science museums.  Additionally, nearly three out of five respondents believe that the science museum has something offer children “of all ages.”  Nearly half of respondents are visiting four or more times a year, indicating that science museums are part of the routines for many Core Visitors, a very good thing.  And finally, 84% of respondents felt the museum was “very trustworthy,” a wonderfully high response (and one we will explore in more detail in an upcoming post).

 

But there was some not-so-good news too.

 

Only 39% of respondents felt the museum met the needs of their family, a response that falls in-line with what we have seen in our children’s museum study and our study of outdoor history museums.  

Only 8% of respondents feel the staff of the museum cares about them.  This is the lowest we have yet seen in our field-wide studies; in comparison, 16% of outdoor history museum respondents felt the staff cared about them.

 

Fewer than one in five respondents felt the museum engaged adults.

 

Just 14% felt the museum helped bring the community together, a figure that, once again, falls in-line with what we have seen in our other studies.

 

And 88% of respondents identified themselves as white or Caucasian.  This is simply not the most promising visitation trend over the long-term as

America

becomes increasingly more diverse.  And while this batch of research did not delve into issues of diversity in great detail, we do feel that science-based museums, and other museums that see similar visitation patterns, need to be having conversations on this issue sooner rather than later.  

 

There was some more bad news.  When we separated out the respondents based on what type of museum they responded to, we found something startling.  Of those respondents who responded to the survey invitation of a natural history museum, only 69% said they actually “enjoy” visiting natural history museums.  And for respondents responding to the survey invitation of science centers, only 59% said they actually “enjoy” visiting science centers.  In contrast, 86% of the respondents from children’s museums said they “enjoy” visiting children’s museums, but we believe that adults visiting children’s museums have different expectations for their own engagement than adults visiting natural history museums and science centers, resulting in a different, and more positive, result for the children’s museums in the study.

 

We also found something else that startled us.  When we asked the entire sample of respondents what types of museums they enjoyed visiting, and then ranked the museums by their results, this is what we found:

1. Zoos and Aquariums
2. Natural History
3. Historic Sites
4. Nature Centers
5. Art Museums
6. Botanical Gardens (tied)
7. Science/Technology Centers
8. Children’s Museums (but #2 for parents)
9. History Museums

 

In our studies, zoos and aquariums are the most popular museum type for nearly every audience segment, so that result was no surprise.  Natural history museums do quite well too, followed by historic sites, nature centers, and then art museums and botanical gardens.  What surprised us was that science centers ranked seven out of nine museum types.  We certainly had expected a higher result for science centers, and it was an early clue that we needed to dig further to fully understand what was going on (which we will come back to in the next several posts).  

 

Children’s museums ranked eighth, but came in second to zoos and aquariums when we examined just the responses of parents.  So this result was not surprising.  History museums pulled up the rear.

We should note that in our analysis of other museum visitation from children’s museum visitors, we found somewhat different results, archived here on our blog in the 2008 E-newsletter Articles.  But that sample was somewhat different than this sample, with 91% of respondents being parents of very young, mostly preschool, children.  This sample, in contrast, was still mostly parents, 66%, but these parents were of older children, primarily elementary and middle-school-age children, with a fair number of parents of teens.  Parents of older children, plus a much larger sample of non-parents, created a different result. 

 

Over the next several weeks we will be delving into these challenges, and opportunities, for science-based museums.  Coming up in our next Science Museum Visitors post:  what do Core Visitors believe are the primary roles of the science museum?

 

We would love to hear your thoughts and questions about these topics.  To share or ask questions, simply click on “comments” below.  (If you are reading this from your e-mail subscription to the blog, please go to our blog's website to add a comment.)

Comments

[Paul Orselli]

Thanks for sharing your research.

Given the high percentage of Caucasian visitors to Science Museums (and also History sites, based on your previous studies) I have two questions:

1) Are there studies that show where Asian, Hispanic, and African-American individuals and families spend their leisure time and dollars?

2)How can the current museum business model be reconfigured to take into account: a) an increasingly diverse audience, and perhaps not unrelated, b) the trend away from school fieldtrip visits to museums?

[Susie Wilkening, Reach Advisors]

Hi Paul -

Just in the past week I have run across a study funded by the James Irvine Foundation, focusing on cultural engagement in regions of California. The report does explore minority participation in culture, and the executive summary can be found at http://www.irvine.org/assets/pdf/pubs/arts/CulturalEngagement_ExecutiveSummary.pdf. It certainly has me thinking more about how museums can better engage minority audiences.

Also, we will be sharing some work we are doing for AAM that includes this issue, so stay tuned.

As to field trips - look for a post related to that later today.