Wilkening Consulting is pleased to announce a new partnership with the American Alliance of Museums!

​Our partnership on the 2020 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers will allow for deeper insights, more robust comparisons by museum type, and better data for the field ... and your museum. 

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• Do you have questions about your audience, and what they think about you?
• Questions about potential audiences you'd like to understand better?
• Do you want to learn more about your impact in your community?
• Do you need to track your progress over time?
• Do you want to track results against your peers?
• Are you on a budget?

The 2020 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers can help you with all of these things.
For your museum's $1,000 fee,* you'll receive your museum's custom results from the 2020 survey, including:

• Tracking of your museum's audiences, and their perceptions of your work, over time
• Comparison with peers
• Up to two custom questions for your stakeholders
• Results via spreadsheet and slide deck; participation in online presentation to gain more insights into your results
• Contributing to a national research endeavor that can be tapped to give you a better understanding of potential new audiences

To enroll, simply fill out this short enrollment form. 

For more information, please see this informational PDF, or get in touch with me at susie (at) wilkeningconsulting (dot) com.

Recently, this new data from Pew Research Center caught my eye.

I looked at it and thought, hmmm, interesting. And wondered how museums would rank.

So I fielded it.

I did a "large test" sample of 501 individuals from the broader population, which is enough to make this generalized comparison (though if I wanted to nail it down more precisely, I'd add a thousand respondents).

For museums:

• Negative: 4%
• Positive: 50%
• I don't know: 46%

Interesting. There's some good news here and some not-so-good news.
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First, the good news. We are right up there with the highest things ranked organizations that Pew measured. And, even more importantly, our "negative" rating is A-MA-ZING. We demolished the competition because virtually no one said we were, uhm, bad.

But the not-so-good news is the "I don't know" response. Nearly half of respondents didn't know. They didn't have enough information to decide we were a net good or bad thing in our country. And I find that appalling. To be fair, the other organizations on the lists had "I don't know" responses too … but nowhere near ours. The closest one is "labor unions," with 27% saying "I don't know."

There's one more way to look at the data that makes museums look pretty good, however. It is a simplified version of the "net promoter score," in that we take the positives, subtract the negatives, and come up with a score that tells us if each thing, overall, is viewed as a net good or net bad thing for our country. So let's do that:

Churches and religious organizations: 52 - 29 = 23
Technology companies: 50 - 33 = 17
Colleges and universities: 50 - 38 = 12
Labor unions: 45 - 28: 17
Banks and other financial institutions: 39 - 39 = 0
Large corporations: 32 - 53 = -21
The national news media: 25 - 64 = -39

MUSEUMS: 50 - 4 =  46

​In this scoring, museums crush everyone else. And this probably has a lot to do with how much we are trusted.

So celebrate this finding … but then double-down on our ongoing challenge of broadening our reach to that nearly half of the population that couldn't answer the question in the first place.

More Data Stories and releases from the 2019 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers to come at The Data Museum!


Love this research? Need to benchmark YOUR audience? Then join the 2020 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers!
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Consider how useful it would be to know how your museum's stakeholders feel about your museum, lifelong learning in museums, and more. By enrolling your museum in the 2020 Annual Survey of Museum Goers, you can easily benchmark the visitation rates, motivations, attitudes and preferences, and demographics of your stakeholders. Additionally, you can compare your results to your peers, begin to track them over time, and gain far more contextual information through your custom results and report. The fee for 2020 is only $1,000 per museum.

Click on infographic to enlarge, download, or print.

Attending AASLH? Join us for:
"Wanting to Know? American Perspectives on Bias, Trust, and Inclusive History" 
Thursday, August 29 at 1:45 p.m. 
With Donna Sack (Naper Settlement), Dina Bailey (International Coalition of Sites of Conscience), and Sabrina Robins (African Heritage, Inc.)

Last year, I shared that all good research yields even more questions. That continues to be true, but sometimes those questions align with larger ideas that come from others. Such as the Dalai Lama.

Meeting the Dalai Lama in Dharamshala, India last fall as a participant in the Fostering Universal Ethics and Compassion Through Museums Summit helped me crystallize research patterns I have been noticing into a coherent theory: that knowledge brings a "warmth of mind," or compassion. That is, if we as humans want to do more to solve the ills of the world, making it a more just and equal place for all humans, we need to consider what it is that makes people care about those issues in the first place.

But as much as I love what the Dalai Lama said, I felt the need to back it up a bit. That is, if knowledge yields empathy and compassion, what motivates that pursuit of knowledge in the first place? My research had already suggested an answer: curiosity.

And thus the storyline of the 2019 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers, as well as broader population comparison sample.

The surveys:

• The 2019 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers is a survey of museum-goers, not casual visitors or the broader public.  Fielded this winter, as of this writing (responses still trickling in) there were 10,001 respondents from the email lists of 24 museums, with 56% coming from art, history, and cultural museums, and 44% from children's museums, zoos, and science centers.  This breakdown is excellent, as it allows me to examine and compare two very different groups of visitors (families with minor children and adult audiences) with very different motivations for visiting.​  
• Broader population comparison sampling was fielded concurrently with the Annual Survey in order to provide a comparison sample. The broader population comparison sampling had 1,541 respondents from across the country, with only 13% sharing that they visit museums regularly (note that this is a rather different question than if they had visited a museum in the previous year; that, in oft-repeated broader population sampling, tends to hover around 28%, give or take a few percentage points).

Research goals:

In particular, the surveys focused on the following themes:

• The work of visiting museums. In 2018 we found that parents of young children found visiting museums to be equal parts hard work and pure pleasure. This “pain/pleasure” index for museum visits yielded a great deal of discussion, and I was asked to repeat the question for all museum-goers for greater context. This time, I followed it up with an open-ended question to ask for details about their answer … to explain the “why” behind the hassle.
• Curiosity. What values and outcomes do individuals place on curiosity? What sparks their curiosity? What do they deliberately do to cultivate it in themselves, their children? And how does  curiosity-as-motivation differ from curiosity-as-aspiration? Finally, how does curiosity vary across the broader population?
• Other knowledge-creating activities. What are the other ways that people pursue informal learning? In some ways this will help us identify our competition, but it also will highlight new opportunities for partnerships. Additionally, how does participation informal learning vary across the broader population?
• Empathy. How does knowledge affect people’s ability to connect with others? Do they feel that having more knowledge has made them more understanding of viewpoints different than their own? Does this affect their work? Their community? How they raise their children? Do they care about this? Do they think museums have helped with this? And can we use empathy to promote more civic discourse in these polarized times?
• Benchmarking current audiences of museum participants. Individual museums rely on this work to make a current assessment of their museum's audience, who that primary audience is, and the attitudes and preferences of that primary audience. Participating museums that have worked with me in either 2017 and 2018 are now tracking their results over time, for even greater insight. (See below for how you can do likewise in 2020.)

Research Releases:

As in previous years, I'll be releasing research findings to the field. Most will likely be in the form of infographic Data Stories, but some will be supported by short essays on The Data Museum. The Data Stories and essays will begin this summer (2019).

And now, two additional notes:

• Future Annual Surveys and opportunities for your museum to benchmark and participate: I hold dear the idea that research for the field, about the field, should be shared with the field. But that only works when museums work together to make it possible. Since individual museums are needed to field this work, the survey also benefits participating museums on an individual level by providing benchmark data on visitation rates, motivations, attitudes and preferences, and demographic questions … all of which can then be tracked over time in the future. Participating museums are also allowed to add 1 - 2 custom questions specific to their needs.  Which means if you value this research,  want more of it in the coming years, and want to track your own museum's progress over time, please support this work by enrolling your museum in the 2020 Annual Survey of Museums. It costs only $1,000 per museum.
• Survey bias: All surveys have some degree of survey bias (except, perhaps, the US Census Bureau). Blind spots. No survey is perfect. The Annual Survey of Museum-Goers represents only a small sliver of the US population: those that visit museums on a regular basis. It does not represent casual visitors or non-visitors. My broader population samples are far better for assessing the broader population, but they too have a blind spot. That is, there is a large segment of the population that is extremely difficult to survey. Surveys simply never reach them. And while I could weight my sample for, say, income or education (since low-income, low-education households tend to be under-represented even in broader-population samples), that will only tell me what those individuals who the survey reached thought. Having a survey reach you, and then responding to it, is an indicator of broader engagement with the world, and those that are never surveyed may not be as engaged with the world, and thus have different behaviors and attitudes. Thus, when looking at results from any survey, including mine, take into consideration how large that blind spot is, and be cautious about assuming the results are truly representative of the broader population.

Want to make sure you don't miss one of the upcoming data releases via The Data Museum? To subscribe by email, scroll up until you see the box on the right-hand side that says "To subscribe..." Click on "subscribe" and follow the prompts. (This gets around the mystery of why the box for entering your email address actually doesn't appear, though you can click in the empty white space of the box and find where to enter it, if you are so inclined.)

I shared a lot from the 2018 Annual Survey. So to make your life easier, here's a themed list of releases.

Overview of the 2018 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers
Trust and Museums
Young Adults: 2018 Update
Museum Visitation Rates: The Complete Data Story

Leisure Time
Leisure Time, Relaxation, and Museums, Part 1: Introduction
Leisure Time, Relaxation, and Museums, Part 2: Life Stages
Leisure Time, Relaxation, and Museums, Part 3: Conclusions

Parents and Caregivers
Inspiring Curiosity … or Academic Achievement
Parents: 2018 Update Part 1 - Introduction
Parents: 2018 Update Part 2 - Visitation Patterns
Parents: 2018 Update Part 3 - Stressed Parents, Exhaustion, and the Pain/Pleasure Index
Parents: 2018 Update Part 4 - Making Deep Impact Easy for Families
Parents: 2018 Update Part 5 - Curiosity (and the Privilege of Being Curious)
Parents: 2018 Update Part 6 - Family Time as Differentiating Factor
Families, Their Needs, and Museums: A New Data Story!

Impact
Impact 2018. Why do museums matter? - Introduction
Knowledge: An Impact of Museums Data Story (1 of 4)
Curiosity: An Impact of Museums Data Story (2 of 4)
Empathy: An Impact of Museums Data Story (3 of 4)
Creativity: An Impact of Museums Data Story (4 of 4)
The Questions Was About Impact. I Got Revisionist History Fears.

Sense of Place
Museums and Sense of Place, Part 1: Introduction, Sense of Place When Traveling
Museums and Sense of Place, Part 2: A Sense of Place at Home

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Love all of this research? Then join the 2019 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers!

Consider how useful it would be to know how your museum's stakeholders feel about your museum, lifelong learning in museums, and more. By enrolling your museum in the 2019 Annual Survey of Museum Goers, you can easily benchmark the visitation rates, motivations, attitudes and preferences, and demographics of your stakeholders. Additionally, you can compare your results to your peers, begin to track them over time, and gain far more contextual information through your custom results and report. The fee for 2019 is only $1,000 per museum.

Last summer, a fire overwhelmed a museum, destroying thousands of "irreplaceable artifacts" and leaving "devastation inside." Things "gone." A "disastrous list" of losses. And a major hit on the memory of a place.

Am I talking about Brazil's National Museum? Nope. I am referring to the loss of the Aberdeen Museum of History, here in Washington State. This small community was devastated by a fire that consumed not only their museum, but also a senior center and low-income assistance offices.

The words used to describe the loss, however, are fascinating, as they convey the idea that the objects of a community's past are part of its memory and what make a place, well, a distinctive place.

When loss makes palpable what we take for granted, it becomes much easier to articulate value. In my work, I call this the "loss aversion" line of inquiry (which is quite useful for sussing out the impact of museums, as we have recently seen). 

But communities don't lose museums very often, so how museums do (or do not) contribute to that sense of place is hard for most people to articulate. I suspected this to be true, which is why in the 2018 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers, I had a lead-in question about sense of place when traveling. 

So what did I find when I asked museum-goers to share if they thought their local museums contributed to the sense of place of their own communities? Four out of five respondents said yes, their local museums contributed to their community's sense of place. So that is great news, right?

Well, sort of. Yes, it is great news that there is pretty universal agreement here. But here's the thing: many respondents couldn't back it up with why. They had comments like:

• "yes...can't really articulate why."
• "They do but I'm not sure why?"

There were also a lot of simple "yes" responses, but nothing else. Nothing to say how, or why. Responses, overall, were far less detailed than for the first question about sense of place when traveling.

So let's pick apart what people did say, and then come back to what people didn't.

First, history organizations were overwhelmingly given credit for helping create a sense of place, with art museums on their heels. Comments like these two illustrate this (one rather thoughtful, one more typical):

• "Yes.  Regardless of where you live, others lived there before you.  Their history, art, lives and stories combine to explain how and why your community is the way it is."
• "Reminds us that we live in an area with a significant history."

But whose history creates that sense of place? One respondent noted that a place is shaped by "what it chooses to preserve about its history," which gives us a wrinkle that is, of course, rather important: what we choose to preserve. Thus, it shouldn't surprise us that we also had a few comments like this one:

• "In [my community] that depends entirely on who you are and what color you are.  We have some fine historical repositories, and most white natives with some education and money identify strongly with them -- but they are definitely white elitist institutions."

While there were only a handful of comments like this, that it was only a bare handful also likely reflects that the vast majority of respondents were white and not necessarily noticing that the history being preserved isn't sharing a complete story of the past. (Stay tuned for more on this topic in 2019.)

How museums contribute to a sense of place also depends on the type of museum. While some felt that all types of museum contributed, there were a handful of comments that said things like this one:

• "Some do, but some don't. The science museum does not, but that's because it's centered around science and not [my community]."

And a few, a very few, just said nope.

• "No, I don't see museums as a community thing."

So what does this all mean? First, the vast majority of museum-goers do think museums contribute to their community's sense of place. But … only a fraction can articulate why.

And if our best friends, our regular museum-goers, cannot articulate it, that means casual and non-visitors surely cannot either. When residents cannot articulate our value, our impact, then it makes it harder for us to make our case for support so that we can do more of this work that benefits communities.

Instead, we have to do a better job of articulating how we contribute to our communities ourselves, in this case through a sense of place (but in all ways we contribute, of course). We need to use language that our visitors and the residents in our communities can then pick up and use as well. Otherwise, if we are not sharing the how, the why, and the value of our work, how can we expect others to do so?

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Do you value this research? Does it help you in your work at your museum? Do you want it to continue to help you and our field?

If so, consider how useful it would be to know how your museum's stakeholders feel about your museum, lifelong learning in museums, and more. By enrolling your museum in the 2019 Annual Survey of Museum Goers, you can easily benchmark the visitation rates, motivations, attitudes and preferences, and demographics of your stakeholders. Additionally, you can compare your results to your peers, begin to track them over time, and gain far more contextual information through your custom results and report. The fee for 2019 is only $1,000 per museum.