One of the things I look at is what I call "museum omnivorousness." That is, how many different museums does an individual or family visit in the course of a year?

Why? It is an indicator of an intrinsic motivation for learning, as those with strong intrinsic motivations tend to go to more museums, more often. More museums theoretically means more engagement, more connection, more impact (and the data does, generally, bear this out).

Overall, in my 2017 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers, about 30% of respondents said they visited five or more different museums/year. Statistically, if we are considering this the "avid museum-goer" category (which would be fair enough), that means "avid museum-goers" are visiting a different museum less than once every two months on average. In some ways, sure, that's a lot of time in museums. But in others, not so much. (Heck, there are some months my family does five different museums … and that's not even counting vacations. Granted, we are really weird.)

But there were differences within the data. Those responding to an art or history museum's survey showed more omnivorousness (and more intrinsic motivation as well) than those responding to a children's museum or a science center.

​Why? As you'll see in a few weeks, it pretty much boils down to the extrinsic motivations of what I call "The Parent Bubble," which disproportionately visits children's museums and science centers.

There is something else to keep in mind: these are regular museum-goers, connected enough with museums to receive regular communications from at least one museum, to visit that museum repeatedly, and perhaps to be a member or donor. When I run the data for the broader population of American adults, the number is way lower: a mere 4%. If museums are going to be deeply relevant to more people, it looks like our work is cut out for us.


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.

I am writing this essay from a place a privilege. To be honest, my life has been one of privilege.

It just didn't occur to me that my survey questions on intrinsic and extrinsic motivations around learning might reflect that privilege. That having an intrinsic motivation to learn might be rooted in class. After all, everyone goes to school, right?

But I was wrong. Naïve. I realize it now.

As I began to analyze the data from the 2017 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers, I started to see patterns that first surprised me, and then made me head slap myself:

1. Intrinsically motivated individuals were about 25% more likely to have been raised in a college-educated household; and
2. People of color, overall, had lower rates of intrinsic motivation

And then, when I was hand-coding written-in comments, this:

"Question 21 poses another ridiculous choice: it is easy for me, a well-educated white person, to believe that jobs should be chosen based on self-fulfillment rather than on income, but have you asked this question to many poor or uneducated people?"

That survey respondent was absolutely right … and the same thing goes for reasons to pursue higher education. To say "learn for learning's sake" assumes the job and compensation will be there as well. And that is an assumption many cannot afford to make, as their life experiences has shown them. It is an assumption that comes from privilege.
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In theory, having an intrinsic motivation to learn shouldn't have anything to do with socio-economic status (SES), or race, or ethnicity. But when a family is struggling to make ends meet, when work is hard, perhaps unrewarding, and a means to an end for shelter, food, and other necessities, well, it is completely understandable why extrinsic motivations drive learning. It's an illustration of Maslow's hierarchy.

Why? Having (or cultivating) an intrinsic motivation to learn requires resources. Resources of time, energy, and money. Libraries have done amazing work to nurture intrinsic motivations at no cost, but it still takes time and energy to go to the library in the first place. And museums … even more so as we typically take even more time and energy to visit (think transportation, time) and have an admission fee (and transportation costs). Other activities that those with intrinsic motivations enjoy also have relatively high costs of time, energy, and money.

So if museums are really going to matter to more people, and if we want to cultivate an intrinsic motivation to learn, we need to think long and hard about how we are going to accomplish that. Harvard professor of economics Sendhil Mullainathan suggests working proactively to give more children educational tailwinds … as doing so can "solve many otherwise intractable problems" by keeping children in school longer, with the many positive impacts that generates.  For museums, that means taking our museum to where those children are, in ways that are welcomed and easy … and fulfilling their family's extrinsic motivations. That likely means more programs in neighborhood health clinics, laundromats, and food banks. More take-home activity kits packed into weekend food backpacks. It also likely means fewer new museum buildings or wings. 

Personally, I'm thinking long and hard about how I will use these survey questions in the future. Understanding individual underlying motivations, and whether they are intrinsic and/or extrinsic, is incredibly important for understanding how museums can make a difference in more lives. These questions worked rather well for that purpose, but I'm going to keep testing new questions that I can use to capture the nuance around motivations in more sensitive ways. Your thoughts and advice are welcome.



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.

For some museum-goers, the museum shop is a key part of the experience. Half of respondents in the 2017 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers responded that they enjoyed shopping in museum shops.

But enjoyment of the shop isn't consistent from one group of museum-goers to another. While two-thirds of women over 50 enjoyed museum shops, it plummets to only a third of parents of children 10 and younger.

Museum shops also came up a bit in my open-ended questions, with respondents sharing how, at times, museum shops can really make the experience continue for decades after. They are enablers of tangible reminders of moments that we shared, moments that moved us, and our connections to art, history, and humanity, as you can see in the thoughts of these two museum-goers:

• "I rediscovered a piece of art at Mia, "The Blessing of the Tuna Fleet at Groix" by Paul Signac last fall. I remember coming to Mia in 3rd grade on a class field trip and fell in love. I found the piece again and was so happy to enjoy it again in person. That night at the gift shop I found a copy of it and bought it."
• "… I was able to purchase in the gift shop reminders of the museum that I have in my home and remember the experience every time I look at them."

So perhaps it isn't a surprise that parents are not as keen on shops, while older women are. It isn't that parents don't care about those kinds of experiences, or remembering them, but that they are more often visiting children's museums and science centers, which provide rather different experiences than art and history museums. (And, to be fair, some of it may be that parents don't want to deal with kids wanting what's in the shops.)

In contrast, at an art museum it is often easy to purchase a print of a painting that evoked a meaningful moment, thus extending that moment in a tangible way. Since regular art and history museum-goers are more likely to be women over 50, this finding that these women are the most likely to enjoy museum shops makes all the sense in the world.


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.

This research release is a continuation of Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivations and Museums: Part I, and is rooted in my recent research, including the 2017 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers and broader population samples I ran in the fall of 2016 and spring of 2017.

People visit museums for lots of reasons. We all know that. And when we ask visitors why they visit, there are a few reasons that come up often.  They visit for family time. Because they want to see something at the museum. For fun. For learning experiences. To bring out of town guests. And so on.

What visitors don't say are things like "I have a strong intrinsic motivation to learn." Or "I don't really like museums, but I think it is important for my kids to come to get a leg up on school." (As you'll see as my research unfolds, both valid reasons for visiting, though I am admittedly giving extreme examples.)

Yet the difference between these two reasons, and others I am uncovering, are huge. Especially, around impact, which I'll discuss in a future research release.

To begin to sort through all of this, and why it matters to museums, let's step back and focus on breaking down the population so that we have a sense of how it plays out overall. I'll include comments on how it affects museum visitation.

First, as I mentioned in an earlier research release, motivations around learning are not a zero-sum game. Even the most intrinsically motivated person likely has extrinsic motivations for learning (such as making a living). And there's a good chunk of the population that is intrinsically motivated at some level, but extrinsic motivations are stronger. But generally, I think it is fair to break down the population this way:

Broadly, that means three segments of the population.

1. Extrinsically motivated, reactive. Two sub-groups are in this group:

1. Individuals who see learning as such hard work (in psychology terms, a "low need for cognition," and they are at the lowest end), they don't seek it out. Even when they know it could help them. Learning is something that happens when it is required of them (compulsory attendance at school; training for a specific job).
2. Some individuals who would value learning, and be proactive about it, if they had to time, energy, or money to think about it and do so. (This is a smaller group.)

Overall, this group is extremely, extremely hard to conduct research on, as they rarely (if ever) take surveys. Why? Two reasons: 1 - since they don't seek out information unless absolutely necessary (or, for some, because they have no time to be proactive about it), they are not likely to be on any lists, or be intercepted by an online survey; and 2 - surveys are not something they are inclined to participate in anyway. They are a huge part of what I refer to as the "blind spot," or survey bias that means practically no survey truly represents the population. I don't have a strong sense of the size of this population, but if I had to guess, I would guess about a third of American adults, maybe more. (BTW, they don't visit museums.)

2. Extrinsically motivated, proactive. Individuals that place a value on learning, even a very high value on learning, but primarily as a means to an end to reach one or more goals in their life. And they are proactive about it through both formal education and informal means. So going to college to get a good job. Training programs for a better job that can better support a family. Learning to fit in with a social group. Learning to gain approval (such as that of a parent). And so on. Learning isn't necessarily their favorite thing to do (we could probably put it in the same category as vegetables and exercise; good for you, ok to do, but not necessarily relished by many). But these individuals have good, even excellent reasons for actively seeking out learning, and do so when those learning opportunities meet their needs. That can mean museums, whether sporadically, casually, or often (indeed, some of our most avid museum-goers are highly extrinsically motivated). But if museums are not meeting their needs, there is no reason to visit (as you'll see, this is a HUGE issue). My estimate for this segment of the population? About 50% - 60%.

Note: Some of the extrinsically motivated, proactive learners may also have rather strong intrinsic motivations around learning. For some, in certain subject areas they enjoy. For others, generally. What I'm looking at is their overall motivations around learning, and for this category, those individuals who are more extrinsically motivated than intrinsically motivated.

3. Intrinsically motivated, proactive. Individuals who love to learn for its own sake. Who find learning pleasurable, enlightening, relaxing (in psychological terms, having a "high need for cognition"). Highly curious individuals. These individuals seek out learning opportunities often because they like to think. They read for pleasure (including literary fiction, nonfiction). And they are the biggest fans of museums. Museum-going happens for them throughout their lifetimes, regardless of the presence of children in their lives (a distinction that matters). In fact, I think it is fair to say that museums have cornered this market. My estimate for this segment of the population? I have 6% in my research notes, but let's estimate 5%, maybe slightly higher.

Now, there is an important issue here we can't ignore. Valuing learning primarily for its own sake more than for extrinsic economic reasons may be related to class … and an assumption that the good job will come with it.  Thus, socio-economic status, capacity (time, money, energy) to pursue learning, and also race and ethnicity all affect learning motivations. That tricky dissection is coming in my next research release.

Additionally, I want to go back to something I just said about the intrinsically motivated. That we've "cornered this market." That's really important because it means that since they already know us, love us, and seek us out. There is no potential audience growth here, and our marketing really doesn't matter to them because they are actively searching us out anyway. But at only about a twentieth of the population, they can't sustain museums (and nor would we want to serve only them, obviously).

No, our focus needs to be on extrinsically motivated, proactive individuals, which is the segment of greatest potential growth. They put a high value of learning, and thus we are well-positioned to serve them well. But only if we present our value on their terms, meeting their needs. Some extrinsically motivated individuals (primarily parents of young children) inherently get this, and visit museums regularly. But most don't find the value of museums to be worth it (as much as it pains me to write that). You'll be hearing a lot more about this in the coming weeks.



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.

Surprised? I was too … by how low the numbers were in my 2017 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers. After all, cameras are ever-present in our lives.

​So first I do have a methodological caveat: this was an answer choice among several choices about museum experiences. Thus, respondents who didn't mark it may take photos as well … just not feel as strongly about it.

My bigger point is different. Museums are places of bonding and connection. Photos help reinforce those bonds and memories. I'll be coming back to this idea in my longer essays, but in short, young adults share with me that museums are great places to go with friends as they jumpstart interesting conversations. And families. They share that museums provide meaningful family bonding experiences, as the content gives them something to share, discuss, and do together without the distractions of daily life.

So of course these segments of museum-goers are more likely to want to take and share their photos!


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.