Museum Audience Insight

Finding Meaning in Museums: Exhibitions or Programs and Events?

Museums do a lot of stuff, but for most museums, their bread and butter are the exhibitions that they display.  But museums also spend a lot of time and resources to create programs and special events.

And there are a myriad of reasons to do so.  Programs and special events are fun, draw attention to a museum, give some people a reason to visit for the first time, and give others a reason to return. They can also do things that exhibitions cannot always do, such as going behind the scenes or trying something that just isn’t feasible in an exhibition.  Some simply ooze positive learning outcomes.  We could go on and on.  Programs and special events are great. 

 

But when it comes to create deep meaning and connection for visitors, how do programs and special events compare with exhibitions?  Given the prevalence of original objects in the most meaningful experiences adult museum visitors related to us in our recent research on the topic, we were curious.  So we went back to the raw data to find out.  (See the end of this post for our definitions and a snag we hit in coding.)

Three out of four - a whopping three-quarters - of the meaningful experiences adults shared with us took place in exhibitions.

This makes sense, as this is where most of those original objects actually are. 

 

How did staff, programs, and special events fare?  Not nearly as well. 

• Programs – 6%
• Staff/demonstrations – 5%
• And special events?  Less than 1%.

 

Now we are the last people to say that a museum should not do programs or special events.  Every museum should, and there are many, many important reasons to do them.  They can even be transformative; one that immediately comes to mind is the Follow the North Star program at Conner Prairie. 

 

It’s just that when it comes to the deeper experiences that visitors find most meaningful, those exhibitions that (sometimes quietly) fill our galleries seem to be having an outsized impact. 

Yet museums need to engender those connections and meaningful experiences if they are going to survive, and even thrive, in an uncertain future when a plethora of other meaningful, or even superficial, experiences are competing for attention and for financial support.

 

What do you think?  Simply click on “comments” below to share your thoughts (and if you are reading this from your e-mail subscription, go to our blog to comment).

 

Definitions and Aforementioned Snag

We decided that programs and special events were the types of things that museums would list in calendars of events, and that programs were smaller-scale, repeatable things like lectures, classes, and story hours for children.  Special events were larger-scale activities that less regularly and bring in larger numbers of people, such as a Chinese New Year celebration or a Sheep to Shawl festival.  Your definitions may slightly vary, and that’s OK.

We ran into a snag regarding demonstrations and guided tours.  That is, someone demonstrating weaving at an outdoor history museum might be considered part of an exhibition, but at a different museum it could be a program, or part of that Sheep to Shawl festival.  (Similarly, guided tours are how you see historic house exhibits, while they are a program at art museums.)  We couldn’t always tell from what respondents shared with us, so instead we created a fourth category for staff, demonstrations, and tours.

 

Photo credit:  Erik Daniel Drost

 

 

 

Meaningful Museum Experiences: It's the Cool Stuff!

If you think back to your most meaningful museum experience, what was it that made it so meaningful?  Was it something you saw, something you did, or a mixture?  Did some story just connect with you in some way?    Or did you learn something new that was just interesting?

Over the past few posts we have been sharing some of our latest research, this time on what makes a museum experience particularly meaningful for adult visitors.  That is, we are interested in how adults engage emotionally and intellectually with museum content, and what the common themes are. 

Additionally, we believe that the museums that are able to engage their visitors on a deeper level will be the ones that have a more sustainable future, especially in an increasingly competitive landscape.   (We are also very interested in the social/family aspect of museum visits, but that is a different topic and study.)

 

When we analyzed the nearly 4,000 written-in experiences shared by our survey respondents, there were three big themes that emerged, as well as one ginormous one.

First up, the three big themes:

• Connection to content.  A significant number of respondents felt a deep connection with either the stories shared with them or had an aesthetic experience that touched them emotionally.  In some cases, the connection was inexplicable or surprising. 

I was inspired by a trip to Ellis Island in my early 20s and felt such a connection to the early immigrants that it has stayed with me for years.  I . . .  would love to go back and take my kids so that they could see it and so that I could reexperience it . . .

• Information learned.  Some respondents just simply geek out at the stuff they get to learn . . . those fascinating tidbits that are fun or open their minds to new ideas. 

All museums I have attended through life have provided visually stimulating information and ideas - whether through the creativity of art, information of science or history. It helps open my mind and helps appreciate life all the more.

• Hands-on experiences.  Not just for kids, many adults seek out and enjoy being hands-on as well, and those experiences can be meaningful as well.

Visiting Hagley Museum when they demonstrated life during the early duPont years through hands on experiences . . .  Allowing visitors to participate made it more meaningful and concrete how different life was back then.

But what about that ginormous theme?  Frankly, it left the other themes in the dust.

 

Original objects.  Yes, that’s right.  It’s the artifacts, artworks, and objects we preserve and share with visitors that is most likely to hit their emotional core and create meaning and response in them.

 

Respondents were two times more likely to mention an original object than information learned, and it also appeared over four times more than hands-on experiences.

It was a sketch of some hands that I saw in an art museum. The world seemed to fall away around me as I viewed it. I could have stayed there all day - staring at it and studying it . . .

Yet here is where we also were scratching our heads, because in a field-wide project from 2010 we found that less than half of regular museum goers said they prefer object-based experiences in museums, even among regular visitors to object-heavy history and art museums. 

Thus, it appears there is tension between what regular museum-goers explicitly state about their preferences about museums, and what is actually happening, deep down, creating meaning and sometimes even transformation.  We’ll come back to this tension later this fall.

 

But as Reach Advisors continues to examine this extremely large cache of data, and building on our existing qualitative client work, we are repeatedly finding ourselves coming back to the idea that original objects appear to be the most common, fundamental building block of meaningful, even transformational, experiences for our visitors, both adults and children (as we saw in our recent memory work, and as we’ll come back to in a few weeks). 

 

Although we'll return to the subject of objects later this fall, our next post will look at this data cache one more time, examining the type of experience respondents found most meaningful (that is, exhibition, program, or special event). 

What do you think?  Simply click on “comments” below to share your thoughts (and if you are reading this from your e-mail subscription, go to our blog to comment).

Meaningful Museum Experiences: Initial Findings

As museum professionals, we all likely find great meaning in what we do, and hope that we are providing the most meaningful, memorable, and engaging experiences to our visitors.  We also understand that doing so is likely going to be absolutely crucial as competition for precious leisure time, other educational options, and philanthropic dollars, becomes even fiercer.  How do museums set themselves apart? 

 

In our last post, we laid out why it is important to understand what adults find most meaningful in museum experiences, not only because that is what a museum is supposed to do, but also for future sustainability.  That is, museums that don’t understand how it is they can be most meaningful may find themselves increasingly irrelevant.

To begin to crack this very complex nut, we first examined the over 4,400 adult meaningful museum experiences we gathered in our latest field-wide research, and coded them for what type of museum is being described.  Some respondents said very clearly, naming the specific museum where they had had their most meaningful experience.  Others were clear enough from context, mentioning paintings, historic spaces, or science experiments.  And some were too vague to tell.  We ended up coding all of the responses into the following museum genres:

• Art museums
• History-based museums (museums, historic sites, etc.)
• Science centers
• Natural history or anthropology museums
• Other types (zoos, botanical gardens, children’s, etc.)
• Too vague to tell

 

So what did we find?  First off, despite our asking respondents specifically to NOT tell us about experiences that involved friends and family members, about 10% of the sample answered about their children anyway.  We removed those responses from the sample, leaving us with nearly 4,000 responses to work with. (Note that we do consider the social/family aspect of museum visits to be very important, but that is a different topic and study; we wanted to stay focused on the individual adult experience with museums and their content).

 

The majority of the remaining responses were from art and history-based museums, each accounting for 28% of experiences shared.  Given our previous research delving into early childhood museum memories, these results did not surprise us as history and art museums also turn up in a large share of childhood memories.

What did surprise us a bit was that only 19% of responses recounted experiences from science centers/museums – a respectable showing, but not as high as we had hoped given the prevalence of science centers and how science and technology impacts our daily lives in meaningful ways.  Additionally, the experiences recounted about science centers tended to be more cursory and less detailed than those for art or history museums, again following a similar pattern we saw in our memory work. 

 

Our next post will explore the four major themes we found when we analyzed these meaningful museum experiences, and these themes will shed some light onto why art and history museums did rather well in creating environments conducive to the most meaningful experiences.

What do you think?  Simply click on “comments” below to share your thoughts (and if you are reading this from your e-mail subscription, go to our blog to comment).

Meaningful Museum Experiences

Take a moment and think back to a museum experience you had that you found deeply satisfying, engaging, or intellectually stimulating.  Do you remember how you felt during that experience?  What did you see or do that made that experience so meaningful?  Does that museum have a special spot in your heart? 

In all likelihood, the experience you are remembering exemplifies what museums do best when they truly, deeply, engage their visitors, and it likely illustrates how a museum best fulfills its mission. 

 

We are obsessed with trying to figure out what it is about those museum experiences that have created meaningful experiences for visitors, and figuring it out is absolutely crucial to museums if they are going to survive, and thrive, in an uncertain future when a plethora of other meaningful, or even superficial, experiences are competing for attention and for financial support.

Or, to put it another way, strategically thinking about how to make museum visits the most meaningful for all visitors can put a museum on the path of being relevant, valued, and successful at what it does while also proving the case for support for philanthropic dollars.  Why?  Because we find that adults who have had particularly meaningful experiences appear to visit more often, tell others to visit, are more curious and engaged citizens, are more philanthropic towards museums, and think that museums are vital assets in their communities.  Those are some pretty big reasons.

 

Over the next several posts, we will be looking specifically at adult engagement in museums.  Last winter, in our study of children’s museum visitors, we asked respondents to tell us about their most satisfying, engaging, or stimulating museum experience.  We carefully worded the question this way because we wanted to understand what engaged them content-wise and because we did not want to capture experiences that were really about their children (please note that we do consider the social/family aspect of museum visits to be very important, but that is a different topic and study; we wanted to stay focused on the individual adult experience with museums and their content).  Because parents who visit children’s museums are most likely to be parents that disregard their own interests and curiosity, our sample was going to consist of the toughest adult museum visitors out there – the ones that may not even really think of themselves as museum visitors. 

 

We captured over 4,400 experiences, overwhelmingly from mothers of young children, but also from fathers and grandparents.  While these demographic and life stage characteristics should be kept in mind, it should be noted that we have used similar versions of this question in our qualitative client work, and overall the results that we’ll be sharing over the next several posts are consistent with those who have different demographic characteristics or are in different life stages.  That is, our initial results appear to indicate that the most meaningful museum experiences are rather universal in nature, though there are some nuances that add a lot of complexity to our analysis.

 

We’ll be sharing the sometimes surprising and totally fascinating initial findings this fall, seeking out patterns in what adults find most meaningful and engaging about museums.  Additionally, we’ll be examining how these patterns, and actual behaviors in museums, sometimes indicate unexpressed desires that simply are not mentioned when we explicitly ask visitors why they visit museums.  We don’t claim to have any magic bullets for creating a meaningful and engaging museum experience for all visitors, but we do feel we are making a crucial start on helping museums plan a more meaningful future for themselves and their visitors.

One final note.  We have not forgotten about children and what makes an experience particularly meaningful and memorable to them.  We’ll address that topic in future posts as well!

What do you think?  Simply click on “comments” below to share your thoughts (and if you are reading this from your e-mail subscription, go to our blog to comment).

Single-Parent Households

If you look at the family memberships at most museums, they assume a family means two adults and children.  And for a logical reason:  based on our client work, our latest study among children’s museum core visitors and members, and US Census analysis, we estimate that 90% of core visitors with children are married. 

But a third of US households with children are headed by single parents.  That’s a big gap – and a gap that is growing wider by the day.  Since single parents also tend to have lower levels of income and educational attainment, and are more likely to be minorities, the gap becomes more troubling.

This gap has been on our minds for a while, so a comment in that recent study of children’s museum core visitor really stood out for us:

“Unfortunately, we will discontinue our membership when it expires because they no longer offer a [membership] for 2 people.  I am NOT willing to purchase a family membership – at double the price . . . I am a single mom, only [one] income, and only one child.  We will not be able to purchase a Supporting membership (4 people).  This makes me sad.”

Professionals in the museum field talk a lot about attracting more diverse audiences, and having difficulties finding the levers to better attract them.  But are we also setting up barriers when we don’t consider the financial challenges many families do have that put visitation and membership out of reach?

Maybe we need to look at our admissions packages and membership levels, and think about how families that don’t fit that traditional model of two parents + children might fit in.  Can we make these packages and membership more flexible?  Can we do it in a way that is fair to families of all shapes and sizes, but not in a way that is likely to be abused by those seeking an even better bargain (that is, we don’t want families headed by two parents to choose only one parent to put on the membership . . . we want both parents to visit!). 

We are not suggesting that changing membership levels will instantaneously draw more diverse audiences to a museum.  It takes much more than that.  But breaking down barriers that we have imposed ourselves, albeit unwittingly, is a good step in the right direction. 

 

This post, which touches on admission fees as well, is a perfect segue to a new series of posts we’ll be running in the next few weeks, based on a quick survey we conducted last winter on attendance trends.  We’ll be coming back to our latest research on meaningful museum experiences later in the summer.

What do you think?  Simply click on “comments” below to share your thoughts (and if you are reading this from your e-mail subscription, go to our blog to comment).

If you look at the family memberships at most museums, they assume a family means two adults and children.  And for a logical reason:  based on our client work, our latest study among children’s museum core visitors and members, and US Census analysis, we estimate that 90% of core visitors with children are married. 

But a third of US households with children are headed by single parents.  That’s a big gap – and a gap that is growing wider by the day.

Since single parents tend to have lower levels of income and educational attainment, and are more likely to be minorities, the gap becomes more troubling.

This gap has been on our minds for a while, so a comment in that recent study of children’s museum core visitor really stood out for us:

If you look at the family memberships at most museums, they assume a family means two adults and children.  And for a logical reason:  based on our client work, our latest study among children’s museum core visitors and members, and US Census analysis, we estimate that 90% of core visitors with children are married. 

But a third of US households with children are headed by single parents.  That’s a big gap – and a gap that is growing wider by the day.

Since single parents tend to have lower levels of income and educational attainment, and are more likely to be minorities, the gap becomes more troubling.

This gap has been on our minds for a while, so a comment in that recent study of children’s museum core visitor really stood out for us:

“Unfortunately, we will discontinue our membership when it expires because they no longer offer a [membership] for 2 people.  I am NOT willing to purchase a family membership – at double the price . . . I am a single mom, only [one] income, and only one child.  We will not be able to purchase a Supporting membership (4 people).  This makes me sad.”

Professionals in the museum field talk a lot about attracting more diverse audiences, and having difficulties finding the levers to better attract them.  But are we also setting up barriers when we don’t consider the financial challenges LINK TO CENSUS POST many families do have that put visitation and membership out of reach?

Maybe we need to look at our admissions packages and membership levels, and think about how families that don’t fit that traditional model of two parents + children might fit in.  Can we make these packages and membership more flexible?  Can we do it in a way that is fair to families of all shapes and sizes, but not in a way that is likely to be abused by those seeking an even better bargain (that is, we don’t want families headed by two parents to choose only one parent to put on the membership . . . we want both parents to visit!). 

We are not suggesting that changing membership levels will instantaneously draw more diverse audiences to a museum.  It takes much more than that.  But breaking down barriers that we have imposed ourselves (albeit unwittingly) is a good step in the right direction. 

 

This post, which touches on admission fees as well, is a perfect segue to a new series of posts we’ll be running in the next few weeks, based on a quick survey we conducted last winter on attendance trends.  We’ll be coming back to our latest research on meaningful museum experiences later in the summer.

What do you think?

“Unfortunately, we will discontinue our membership when it expires because they no longer offer a [membership] for 2 people.  I am NOT willing to purchase a family membership – at double the price . . . I am a single mom, only [one] income, and only one child.  We will not be able to purchase a Supporting membership (4 people).  This makes me sad.”

Professionals in the museum field talk a lot about attracting more diverse audiences, and having difficulties finding the levers to better attract them.  But are we also setting up barriers when we don’t consider the financial challenges LINK TO CENSUS POST many families do have that put visitation and membership out of reach?

Maybe we need to look at our admissions packages and membership levels, and think about how families that don’t fit that traditional model of two parents + children might fit in.  Can we make these packages and membership more flexible?  Can we do it in a way that is fair to families of all shapes and sizes, but not in a way that is likely to be abused by those seeking an even better bargain (that is, we don’t want families headed by two parents to choose only one parent to put on the membership . . . we want both parents to visit!). 

We are not suggesting that changing membership levels will instantaneously draw more diverse audiences to a museum.  It takes much more than that.  But breaking down barriers that we have imposed ourselves (albeit unwittingly) is a good step in the right direction. 

 

This post, which touches on admission fees as well, is a perfect segue to a new series of posts we’ll be running in the next few weeks, based on a quick survey we conducted last winter on attendance trends.  We’ll be coming back to our latest research on meaningful museum experiences later in the summer.

What do you think?

Museum Membership and the Great Recession

We have all seen it happen.  A family approaches the admissions counter, the mom adds up the fees, and then she does the math.  How many times will we visit in the next year?  Is the membership a better deal?  Or should we just pay to enter?

Sometimes it isn’t a mom doing the math, and individuals without minor children sometimes do it as well.  But time and time again, in our field-wide studies, we find that parents with young children (particularly moms) are more likely to say they are members for what we call “budgetary” reasons, that is, to save money or to pay for services received. 

In contrast, older respondents, and some younger ones without children, are more likely to give what we call more “philanthropic” reasons, such as helping the museum improve or that the museum is important to my community.

So that gives you an, albeit basic, rundown of how membership motivations play out among various segments.   Overall, it appears that families with young children are more likely to be concerned with the family budget, while other audience segments are more philanthropic in their giving. 

But has anything changed in the past five years?  That is, has this Great Recession affected motivations for giving?

Short answer:  Yes . . . for some.

Five years ago we surveyed nearly 5,500 core visitors to children’s museums, and found that responding parents were more likely to join for those budgetary reasons than they were for philanthropic reasons.  In 2012, in our latest survey of children’s museums, parents were even more likely to join for budgetary reasons, and less likely to join for philanthropic reasons.  It just seems that families with young children are even more hyper-focused on the family budget.

We also examined the membership motivations of the grandparents from five years ago and today, since grandparents, being older, were more likely to be motivated by philanthropy than the family budget to join.  The result?  Not much difference.  That is, responding grandparents (85% of whom are 55+) are still primarily motivated by philanthropy, not the family budget.

Given that the Great Recession has affected younger adults more than older adults, and that inflation-adjusted income has decreased among those under 55 and increased for those over 55, our results should be no surprise.  Families with young children will likely continue to seek out high-value experiences, and memberships, with an eye on the family budget.  The question is, given the long-term ramifications of lower overall incomes, will they ever have the relative luxury of giving for philanthropic reasons? 

What do you think?  Simply click on “comments” below to share your thoughts (and if you are reading this from your e-mail subscription, go to our blog to comment).

The Role of Children's Museums

We think children’s museums are fun places where families learn together.  But do the parents and grandparents that bring their children to children’s museums agree?

In our latest field-wide survey, which included over 8,400 core visitors to children’s museums across the country, we did a little digging around what visitors think the role of children’s museums is.

But first, let’s take a look at who responded, as that affects the results pretty significantly.

Unsurprisingly, the typical respondent to this survey was a mom – 77% of the sample.  Most moms were in their 30s, college-educated, married, white, and three-quarters have a child that is 5 or younger.  This was almost identical to our findings from our 2007 children’s museum study, which tells us two things: 

1. that the "sweet spot" for children's museums continues to be families with the youngest children (pre-school and younger).
2. that there continues to be a persistent gap in reaching more diverse audiences, especially among those with lower educational attainment, minorities, and single parents.  This is not a challenge unique to children’s museums, however, but common among museums of all types. 

Respondents visited primarily because their children love the museum (66%), for learning opportunities for their children (59%), and because it is fun (58%).  These results are consistent with our previous samples from children’s museums. 

When we ran our first children’s museum study in 2007, however, we were stunned to find that only 34% of respondents felt that their needs were met.  In our 2012 study . . . it was once again 34%.  (For context, we generally find a similar percentage of science center respondents say their needs are met, but for art and history museum respondents the percentage is closer to half.  Why the difference?  We think a lot of it has to do with moms with young children being the toughest, most negative audience segment in museums, and children’s museums and science centers serve a lot of moms and their families.)

Since moms in particular tend to treat visiting museums, especially children’s museums, as more of a task to complete than an enjoyable family outing, we were not terribly surprised by the results when we asked respondents what they felt the primary purposes of a children’s museum were.  The top responses were:

• 79% - place for child to have fun and play
• 77% - place for child to learn and develop
• 66% - place for child to get excited about learning

Only one in five felt that children’s museums were places that brought their family closer together. Since only 16% of respondents said they, as adults, were engaged at the children's museums, it is pretty clear that children's museums are generally perceived to be places to visit for your child, and not as much places you visit with your child. 

But keep in mind that these findings reflect what respondents explicitly think of children’s museums.  In later posts we’ll come back to what they, and their children, have found most meaningful and memorable, as they are not quite the same thing.

What do you think?  Simply click on “comments” below to share your thoughts (and if you are reading this from your e-mail subscription, go to our blog to comment).

Meaningful Museum Experiences: Research Background

What makes a museum experience particularly meaningful for children and adults?  We have to admit, we are rather obsessed with this question. 

As we mentioned in our last post, while our field-wide survey work has helped us identify explicit motivations for visiting museums, our more qualitative client work has helped us suss out the types of experiences adults have found most meaningful, or even transformative. It turns out that what people said they explicitly wanted wasn’t always the same as what they found meaningful.

This year, working with 40 children’s museums, we had an opportunity to dig even deeper into those meaningful experiences for adults, while also trying to understand what makes an experience memorable and meaningful for very young children.  It had also been five years since our last field-wide study of children’s museums, so we thought it was an opportune time to check in and see if there had been any shifts in the visitor base at these museums.

So what were our initial questions as we designed this research?  We boiled it down to these:

• Has the children’s museum audience shifted in the past five years?
• What do visitors perceive the role of the children’s museum to be?
• How do explicit motivations and desires differ from what visitors actually value in experiences?
• Why do some children and adults have particularly meaningful experiences in museums?
• How have some museum experiences changed visitors?  What are the common themes, and how can museums “stack the deck” to help more visitors, both children and adults, have meaningful, even transformational, museum experiences?

Our research doesn’t definitively answer all of these questions, but it does give us some greater insights, pushes our thinking even further, and raises new questions (of course!). 

This study required a combination of survey questions, some of which we had used in the past, as well as two carefully crafted open-ended questions.  Forty children’s museums joined us for the ride and willingly sent out survey requests to their e-mail lists and via their social media outlets.  Over 8,400 respondents took time to respond to the survey.

Over the next few months, we’ll share with you our initial findings, give you a peek into our thought process as we conducted our initial analysis, and, at the end, we hope you’ll help us figure out where the research should go next, as we uncover even more questions along the way.

What do you think?  Simply click on “comments” below to share your thoughts (and if you are reading this from your e-mail subscription, go to our blog to comment).

Explicit Desires and Motivations? Not Everything.

There are so many great things about surveys.  They can measure participation or discontent, help you understand who is visiting (or not), and even give you ideas for things your visitors are explicitly interested in. 

Ah.  But note a specific word choice we made there.  Explicitly.  While surveys are great for many things, there are limitations as well, including the challenge of uncovering what people don’t know they want, or  perhaps don’t know how to articulate.

Let me explain a bit more.

It is not unusual for our qualitative work (the work where we interact with individuals on a one-on-one basis, or where we ask open-ended questions) to actually appear, at first glance, to conflict with our quantitative work (e.g., surveys), where we have mostly closed-ended questions.  Upon closer examination there is often no conflict at all, but this illustrates the strengths and weaknesses of two very different forms of research.

So let’s give a hypothetical example.  If we were to ask mothers in a quantitative survey what their favorite things about weekends are, they might choose a response that has something to do with family time.  But if we were to ask them in qualitative research to tell us about a recent weekend they found particularly enjoyable, they might also say something about alone time.   The family time would thus be the explicit desire, but the alone time might be an unvoiced desire that they may find difficult to articulate, not know they actually have, or may not want to admit to. 

These unvoiced desires, in whatever context, do not detract from the explicit ones, but they provide more depth to research and give us greater insights into how to better serve visitors in a meaningful, and memorable, way.  That is, in ways they don’t explicitly ask for, but respond to.

We sometimes think of it this way.  Explicit desires are the things you highlight in your promotional materials, and you also have to deliver them.  The unvoiced, perhaps unacknowledged, or even unknown, desires are the ones you deliver in addition to the explicit ones, and are often the ones that make a museum visit go from good to meaningful, possibly even transformative.  Delivering them may also surprise and delight your visitors.

Why are we suddenly discussing this on our blog?  Over the past several years, we have surveyed over 100,000 museum-going households, so we have learned a lot about explicit preferences.  And, over the past several years, we have done a great deal of qualitative work as well, mostly for our clients.  That work has helped us uncover some of those fuzzy, nebulous, sometimes esoteric things that visitors emotionally respond to, but may not consciously know they seek or may find difficult to articulate. 

To begin to get a handle on all of this, we launched a field-wide survey this winter with 40 children’s museums from across the country.  And while the bulk of the survey was, yes, quantitative and explicit, the real heart of the survey, the intellectual reason why we ran the survey, was two open-ended questions designed to begin to uncover those unvoiced, perhaps difficult to articulate, desires that emotionally connect visitors, both adults and children, to museums and the stories they have to share.

Next week we’ll begin sharing the findings from this research project.  We’ll start off by quickly going over the methodology and some of the quantitative findings, and then turn our attention to a more in-depth examination of particularly meaningful experiences adults and children have had, both in and out of museums. 

Needless to say, we can’t wait to share!

What do you think?  Simply click on “comments” below to share your thoughts (and if you are reading this from your e-mail subscription, go to our blog to comment).