I bet you love to go to museums. It's the joy of learning, isn't it? Seeing new things, finding out what they are, connecting those stories with others you may know (or to your life experiences). You just never know what you'll learn … and that excites you, right?

And you've seen visitors to museums who are like you. Looking around in wonder, having "oh" and "a-ha" moments of connection and insight, intently reading, looking, talking, or doing.

But they are not all museum visitors, are they? Or even a majority of museum visitors? Because over there? There is a mom, spending more time looking at her phone than the exhibits. I bet she'd rather be doing something else. And on Friday night will your after-hours event be teeming with young adults, many of whom will consider the objects and exhibits mostly background?

I'm not casting aspersions on that mom, or those young adults. Heck, sometimes even I am that mom. The thing is, people come to museums for many different reasons … all of which are valid. And as many of you have shared with me, figuring out those reasons, which are both intrinsic and extrinsic, matter.

I took all of this into consideration when I sat down to draft the 2017 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers. Indeed, sorting out intrinsic and extrinsic motivations around learning ended up being the primary line of inquiry, as my analysis is showing understanding these motivations, and their differences, are incredibly important.

Having an intrinsic motivation for learning, and for visiting museums, not only affects visitation rates over a lifetime, but it affects level of engagement, depth of impact, and philanthropy. Additionally, I'm uncovering patterns that an intrinsic motivation for learning also affects civic engagement, community attachment, and outlook and outcomes in life. The difference matters.

So let's back up a moment and consider what is intrinsic motivation, and what is more extrinsic.

Intrinsic motivations around learning are based in an inherent desire to know. Curiosity. A joy in learning. A feeling of satisfaction when one has had to think and figure something out. A belief that learning unlocks understanding, empathy, a broader outlook, and a confidence in action. Now, someone with strong intrinsic motivations may not believe all those things (much less articulate them), but that's the basic pattern. Psychological and educational research has shown that students with strong intrinsic motivations outperform other students, as do intrinsically-motivated employees.

In contrast, extrinsic motivations around learning are more about a means to an end. Going to college to get a good job (or better job security). Choosing a profession based on salary, not affinity. Visiting museums so that your children learn something (and it's your job as a parent to provide that exposure or experience).

It isn't a zero-sum game, however. Being intrinsically motivated does not preclude extrinsic motivations as well. I consider myself highly intrinsically motivated, but I also acknowledge that my education is a means to an end for bringing in an income to support my family. Or that I may have to research something I'm not interested in because it matters for my work. The two motivations can live together quite nicely, as my rough, hand-drawn graphic shows. The distressing part is that more people are not strongly intrinsically motivated.

10%. Yep, that's the percentage of regular museum-goers that enjoy using their phones to access more information while visiting museums.

Ten percent.

OK, OK. You are right. Different segments of regular museum-goers feel differently about this. Such as parents of teens and tweens, who are most likely to say they enjoy this. Well, 13% of them did.

And young adults without children? A whopping 12% said they enjoyed using their smartphones at museums in this way.

The thing is, people don't come to museums to use their phones. They don't want to take time (and memory) to download your app. And they are choosing to spend time in a museum very deliberately. To see and do what you are offering, and to spend time with those they care about. For many, pulling out a phone likely detracts from those goals. (After all, when phones do come out, how many people go down the rabbit hole of messages, etc., and then stop paying attention to the museum experience in the first place? More than we would like, I suspect.)

Now, this doesn't mean you shouldn't do fantastic things with these computers we all carry around. If you have a great idea that truly supports the story you are trying to tell, deepens the experience, and works best using an app or smartphone, then do it. Whether for use in the museum itself or, perhaps, helping take the museum outside of your four walls. After all, it isn't as if the other 90% hate the idea of using phones in museums … most are probably ambivalent and may try it out if it looks compelling.

But there is no evidence that anyone is making a decision about visiting a museum or not based on this factor. None at all. And if anyone says that you need to do it to attract broader audiences, they are wrong. Indeed, doing it for the sake of doing it actually increases the odds that it will be a distraction, or a lower-quality add-on, and probably turn off audiences.

Besides, anyone can design a great app. Who else provides the kinds of experiences museums provide? 




A note about fielding research. 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 2018 Annual Survey of Museum Goers. The fee for 2018 is only $1,000 per museum. 



The questions for this survey have been inspired by ongoing conversations within the museum field (who does/does not go to museums, why they do/do not visit, and what that means for communities) and ongoing research in the fields of education and psychology around lifelong learning and intrinsic motivation.

As a field, we have all been wrestling with some big questions. Big questions that strike at the heart of what museums do, how we do it, why we do it, and whether we do it more (or less) effectively than others.

To tackle these questions requires research, which is where I come in.

This winter, 25 museums partnered with me to field the 2017 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers. You have seen a couple of posts rooted in that research already (see category "2017 Annual Survey"), but this post is my real kickoff piece, outlining what my research is, what has fed into it, and what is to come.

What is it: A survey of museum-goers, not casual visitors or the broader public (see "bonus research," below, for more on those population segments). There were 6,013 respondents, with 56% coming from art and history museums, and 44% from children's museums and science centers.  This breakdown was close to ideal, as it is a relatively even balance of two very different groups of visitors with very different motivations for visiting.

Research goals: In particular, the survey focused on the following themes:

• Individual attitudes towards learning. In particular, examining how whether one has an intrinsic motivation around learning affects museum visitation and engagement, versus having predominantly extrinsic motivations around learning.
• Community connection and challenges. Does an individual's perceived connection with their community correlate in any way with museum engagement? Is the correlation mutually supporting (that is, mutual causation)? Why or why not?
• Philanthropy and museums.
• Initial articulation of value of museums. Can museum-goers put into words why museums matter to them? If so, what do they say? And, crucially, does having an intrinsic or extrinsic motivation around learning make a difference? (Spoiler alert: it does.)
• Benchmarking current audiences of museum participants. Helping the individual museums that participated by making a current assessment of their museum's audience, who that primary audience is, and the attitudes and preferences of that primary audience. (See below for how you can do likewise in 2018.)

Bonus research: In addition to my work with museum-goers, I have also fielded broader population samples, which permits me to assess how museum-goers are like the broader population … and not. These surveys allow contextualization and, in some cases, stiff reality checks. You'll see these results brought in a fair amount, especially when it comes to estimating the size of the population that visits museums, and how much individuals engage with their communities.

Topics to expect:

• The life cycle of community engagement
• A closer look at disengaged segments of the population (turns out, they are disengaged from their communities and museums)
• Intrinsic motivations around learning and museum engagement, focusing on:
  • Young adults
  • Older adults
• The Parent Bubble -  extrinsic motivations around learning:
  • Engagement levels
  • Attrition rates
  • Articulation of value (or, why touting "museums open minds" may not be broadening your audience)
  • And a complicated discussion of socio-economic status, race, and ethnicity
• Museum value and impact
  • The learning mindset and outcomes
  • Community learning ecosystems
  • Why museums matter to museum-goers (initial look)
• A slew of mini-topic posts, including:
  • Who the crankiest museum visitor is
  • An assessment of museum contributions to a community's quality of life
  • Why no one ever said "hey, let's go to the museum, they have a great smartphone app"
• New questions rooted in this research

And now, three additional notes:

• 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.

 

• Future Annual Surveys: 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 2018 Annual Survey of Museum Goers. If a least 40 museums participate, it costs only $1,000 per museum.

 

• Sources of lines of inquiry: The questions for this survey were inspired by a number of sources. Of course, we all want to know why people visit (or not), what types of museum experiences have been most meaningful, and how museums have made a difference in individual lives. We want to know how to do community engagement better, and what that means for our communities. These questions have been at the forefront of our field for years, as any of you can attest. But as I undertake what I call "Knowledge Curation" for the field, I also see these themes coming from other disciplines and researchers. The Pew Research Center's work on community connection, as well as the publication Place Attachment. Mark Stern and Susan Seifert's work on culture, community ecosystems, and social wellbeing. Shifts in philanthropy, as reported by the Chronicle of Philanthropy and other organizations. New work coming out of the fields of psychology and education. My research questions do not come out of a vacuum of my own brain, but are rooted in your questions and all of these new (and some not so new) research studies (which I do, in my notes, keep track of and how they inform my questions). All I've done is taken your questions, or made connections from other fields to this one, and then turned around and actually asked those questions to the public of museum-goers and non-visitors. (And yes, "all" is an understatement.)

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 "enter your email address." 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.)

Museum-goers. They go to museums. Regularly.
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These are the folks who make a habit of visiting museums and who respond to museum surveys. They like us.

But does visiting museums regularly mean being a member? Or even a donor?

Here, it is as straightforward as it is complicated. That is, it breaks down evenly, as you can see in the graphic:

​Yet these three groups of people present more complex reasons for why they are, or are not, members or donors.

• Do not give. Overall, these individuals are the least engaged museum-goers. They visit less often and are, generally, less positive about museum experiences and the impact of museums. Roughly, there are two groups I flagged in here:
  1. An admittedly small segment comprised of young adults without children. Of all the standard life stages I examined in my analysis, this segment was the most likely to fall into this category (which is why I picked a young woman to represent them in my infographic). But those young adults … in their responses I actually see more engagement with museums and their community than with others in this non-member group. Thus, it's our jobs to create a membership program that meets their needs.
  2. And then there are a whole lot of families and older adults who simply do not visit enough/are not engaged enough to join (and have lower levels of community engagement as well). We have to figure them out too, but they may be a tougher sell because, for them, their issue is with the museum product itself.

 

• Members (but not donors). To be honest, I see a lot of transactional members in this category. They visit museums often, and have a lot of repeat visits. They are more positive about museums than those that don't give … but more negative than donors. Oh, and this. They are WAY more likely to be parents of children 5 and younger (and somewhat more likely to be parents of children 6 - 10). Yep, transactional families who, typically, drop their memberships by the time their children reach middle school, if not sooner. These transactional families are turning out to be a big focus of my analysis, so you'll be hearing more about them (and if we can engage them more deeply … that is, if they even want us to).

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• Donors (and typically members). These are our biggest fans. Especially the ones that identify as both members and donors (I did have a few donors who did not identify as members). They are not as likely to be repeat visitors to a single museum as the transactional members are, but they go to more museums. Additionally, their reasons for visiting are more intrinsically motivated. They love to learn, and seek out learning opportunities because they enjoy it. Those that are parents also hope to extend that love of learning to their children (but were outnumber 2:1 by the transactional member families). Ultimately, however, this group inherently understands the value of museums in their life, and so they support museums.

Of course we all have questions about how we can move those that do not give at all into membership tracks, and how we can cultivate a greater intrinsic motivation to learn among transactional families. I am thinking about that as well, and as more of my analysis unfolds over the next several weeks/months, I hope to have some answers (and likely a lot more questions). 

The 2017 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers was fielded in January/February 2017. 25 museums across the country participated, with n = 6,162; half of respondents came from children's museums and science centers, half from art or history museums. The questions for this survey were inspired by ongoing conversations within the museum field (who visits museums, why they visit, what do they value about museums, and what motivates them) and ongoing research in the fields of education and psychology around lifelong learning and intrinsic motivation.

If you would like your museum to participate in the 2018 Annual of Survey of Museum-Goers, enrollment is now open!

A couple months ago, I shared research that only 14% of the broader population said yes, museums are charity. I posited that Americans define "charity" more narrowly (likely more along the lines of food banks and international relief than museums).

But that doesn't mean museums don't help people. Indeed, 60% of Americans in my broader population sample agreed that yes, museums help people.

Which reinforces that semantics matter. When thinking of museums, some words, like "charity," seem to create dissonance. But helping people? Yes, that works.

But how, in the eyes of the broader public (and museum-goers) do we help people? That's a totally different question.

I'm currently deep in coding of open-ended questions in my 2017 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers (our visitors, not the broader population), which may shed some light on that how. In turn, this will help me understand what new questions to ask the broader population to better understand what they think the role of museums might be (even if they don't visit themselves).

And, to be honest, I'm pretty curious about the 4 in 10 that did not think that museums help people. My initial question indicates that half of that group, (22% overall, to be precise) simply had never thought about it enough to feel they could answer the question. They don't know us well enough (or at all?) to even have an opinion. A finding that I'm not at all surprised by.

So, as always, more to come.