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 Well, this is a painful finding, and I suspect that most museum-goers don't think about museums in this context at all. If we are going to serve our communities well, we not only need to be more obvious about it, but also do it in ways that community benefits are clearer.
I'll explain more when I begin a short series on community engagement in mid-October. Stay tuned. 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. What I have to say may sound harsh.
Museums are failing families. Or, more specifically, museums are failing extrinsically-motivated families. Museums of all types. In my last research release, I shared the broad numbers behind what I call The Parent Bubble. In short, by middle school we only retain a third of museum-going families as regular museum-goers. But now, let's get down to the numbers by museum type. Children's Museums First, no one expects children's museums to retain family audiences into middle and high school. But that doesn't mean children's museums are off the hook. Children's museums attract broader audiences of extrinsically-motivated parents, but those parents are the second crabbiest museum visitor in my research. They enjoy seeing their kids learn through play, but aside from that, they are, well, bored. If they equate museum visits as being for their kids, and with boredom, that isn't conducive to interesting them in visiting a variety of museums as well. (I realize children's museums work hard to create experiences to engage parents and children together, but my research indicates not as much of that is engaging parents as meaningfully as we would like.) Which brings me to point number two for children's museums: their role in encouraging parents to visit a variety of museums. I've heard children's museum professionals tell me that they see part of their work as being a "practice" museum for families, so that families then go off and visit a variety of museums throughout childhood. In my research, there is very little evidence that this happens (and far more evidence that it doesn't happen for most families). Yes, children's museums are a fantastic pipeline for science centers, and to a more limited degree for natural history museums, but not art or history museums. If they were, we likely wouldn't see the significant losses in family audiences over time. Finally, since the long-term losses come almost entirely from extrinsically-motivated parents, it also tells me that children's museums are not cultivating an intrinsic desire to learn among families (this specific research doesn't inform whether they are among children specifically). Science Centers This one I looked at very closely. In theory, science centers are for all ages. In practice, families with children 10 and younger. How do I know? If science centers were serving families with children of all ages, then 40% of all families should be families with tweens and teens. But when I looked at regular visitors to science centers from my 2017 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers, they comprised only 21%. When it comes to losses, which is a different way of looking at it, that means 58% of families with children 10 and younger that visit science centers regularly have dropped into casual or non-visitation by middle and high school. And the crabbiest museum-goer of all? The parent of a tween or teen at a science center. Oh, goodness, they are not thrilled to be there. A sense that they are done. We could argue that losses are to be expected as children grow up and become involved in other activities. But this isn't necessarily true, as my data also shares that the losses come almost exclusively from extrinsically-motivated parents; intrinsically-motivated parents stick with museums (including art and history museums). And if science centers were truly for all ages, wouldn't they at least retain the parents? Doesn't happen. Art and History Museums The story changes dramatically for art and history museums. In contrast to science centers, these museums slightly grow their audiences from families with young children to families with tweens and teens … though it isn't clear if parents of tweens and teens are visiting with or without their children (probably a mixture). Why the growth? Parents of young children that visit art and history museums regularly are four times more likely to say they visit for their own learning opportunities than their peers that visit science centers regularly. Four times. (This response didn't preclude also selecting a response about children's learning opportunities.) Other responses in the survey make it clear that art and history museums do an excellent job attracting intrinsically-motivated parents. Parents who visit with their children, not just for their children. That's the problem. As I shared last fall, intrinsically-motivated parents are only a small sliver of parents. I just don't see a lot of that (much) broader audience of extrinsically-motivated parents at art and history museums. Why? A few reasons come to mind:
Now, it doesn't matter that we, and even most intrinsically-motivated parents, think #1 and #3 are dead wrong. Or that data supports the long-term benefits of art, history, and culture in promoting understanding, cultural competency, critical thinking, and so on. Doesn't matter. Because most extrinsically-motivated parents don’t necessarily see it that way. And they don't visit. So art and history museums have not only done a poor job of broadening their audience by attracting parents in The Parent Bubble, they have also done a poor job providing evidence that what they fundamentally do matters to children, families, and even communities or society. Now that I have taken you to the depths of despair, it's time to pull you back out. We have a sense of the challenges, now let's take some time to learn more about these extrinsically-motivated parents that make up The Parent Bubble, so we can start to do something about it. That's next. 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.  So what's going on here? First, in this question, the respondent is asked to consider the museum that requested they take the survey. That is, my partner museums that sent out the survey to their various contact lists. Thus, if someone is responding to a survey request from the Small Town Children's Museum, then they are considering if the Small Town Children's Museum contributes to that town's quality of life. Same thing about the Big City Art Museum, and so on. Respondents thinking of their local children's museums and science centers are significantly less likely to feel their museum contributes to their community's quality of life than respondents from art or history museums. Why? I think it all goes back to attitudes around visiting. As I shared recently about parents with young children, the majority of those museum-goers are visiting for extrinsic reasons, and thus have the lowest visitor satisfaction rates. That mindset, visiting for their children's benefit, a task they must complete as a good parent, likely narrows their perception of the museum … and makes them less likely to view it as positively contributing to quality of life. In contrast, art and history museum visitors are much more intrinsically motivated, and thus more likely to see those museums more positively. This includes parents of young children responding to these types of museums. Does this mean children's museums and science centers actually contribute less to quality of life than art and history museums? I doubt it. I suspect their contributions are actually about the same (though of different natures). Instead, I think the attitudes of the respondents around visiting color their perceptions, yielding these different results. 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. The Parent Bubble. It is something we have all seen in our work in museums. Adults that, before children, don't visit museums much (perhaps casually, perhaps not at all), and then flood into zoos, aquaria, children's museums, and science centers when they have children. But by the time their children reach middle school, we've lost the majority of parents as regular museum-goers (dropping into casual visitation), and a fifth we have lost entirely. I have already alluded to these patterns, but let's dig into the hard numbers.  General museum attendance.
Let's look at what national research says. In AAM's Museums and America 2017 polling (in partnership with Wilkening Consulting), we asked a broader population sample of 2,021 Americans if they had been to a museum in the past year. We made clear this includes zoos, science centers, historic sites, etc., so a broad definition with a low threshold of just one visit. Of that broader population sample, parents were the most likely segment of the population to have visited a museum in the past year. About half, versus only a third of adults without children. But digging deeper is where it gets interesting. First off, I noticed that parents of tweens and teens were less likely than parents of younger children to have visited a museum in the past year. I then ran the numbers to compare museum-going rates among parents of children 10 and younger, and parents of older children, and found that the net is that we lose a fifth of these family visitors entirely by middle school. That is, a fifth of families with young children that visit at least one museum/year today will not be visiting any museums at all by middle school. And we lose the parents as well. Yet there is another wrinkle that makes this even more interesting. Political persuasion. When I looked through the lens of political persuasion, the losses were entirely among conservative and moderates … while moderates drop out at the overall rate of a fifth, a quarter of conservative families drop out entirely. In clear contrast, however, we actually gain liberal families by middle and high school (up 4% from when children are younger). Fascinating. Frequency of visitation. Given these losses more broadly, I went back to my 2017 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers to put a number to similar losses I was seeing in that data set. In this case, losses were from frequent museum-going families that are members and/or regular museum-goers while children are young, shifting to casual or non-visitors by middle school. (Note my current research doesn't shed light on whether they are going less frequently or not at all, though I have reason to believe it is more of the former.) Here, however, the losses were even greater. Two thirds of regular museum-goers with young children fall back to casual or non-visitation by middle school. Two thirds. And those losses? Almost entirely coming from children's museums and science centers. Art and history museums show far more consistent visitation among family visitors throughout childhood … they just see far fewer of the families in the first place. I'll discuss this in more detail in my next research release. 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.  And, of course, this difference has big repercussions for adult engagement, long-term connection with the institution, and philanthropic giving over a lifetime. It matters. To learn more about the why behind it, however, I recommend my series on intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. Additionally, I just launched a new series on parents and their motivations, with new releases on that topic coming out weekly over the next month. 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. In particular, this question is similar to versions fielded by, among other organizations, the Smithsonian's Office of Policy and Analysis, the Lithuanian Ministry of Culture, Visitors Count!, etc. In our ideal world, everyone who visits museums wants to be there. They are curious, engaged with the content, and leave feeling emotionally and intellectually satisfied. Maybe changed. That ideal vision hits ice-cold reality when it comes to the audience segment most likely to visit museums: parents. The most critical, crabby, disengaged, unhappy museum-goers of all (as made clear in my 2017 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers). And here's the hardest part for us to hear: it is an audience that disappears on us. Two-thirds of museum-going families with young children drop out of regular visitation by the time children are in middle school. And we lose the parents too.  So … most likely to visit, but not happy, and disappearing. Why? How? What? There's a lot to unpack here, so over the next several research releases, I'll be exploring the complicated audience known as parents. Because it seems they have a love-hate relationship with museums. To start off, let's first take a look more broadly. Attendance patterns: From my work with AAM's Museums and America 2017 research, I know that parents are 50% more likely than those without minor children to have visited a museum in the past year. That means there are a lot of parents who, before children, didn't go to museums, but began going when children entered their lives. It also indicates that once children grow up, visitation drops back off (which is, indeed, what we see … a bubble). But the real surge in attendance comes from parents of children 10 and younger; visitation rates drop dramatically for parents of children 11 and older. I'll pick that apart in a later release. Extrinsically motivated: Parents that visit museums are simply far more likely to be extrinsically motivated than other regular museum-goers … 50% more likely. Indeed, they are the significant majority of all extrinsically-motivated museum-goers. Yet these parents are at museums. Why? Fundamentally, it comes down to one value statement: museum-going parents place a high value on learning. An extremely high value. But placing a high value on learning sometimes can have nothing to do with an intrinsic motivation to learn. Some parents have that as well, but they are the minority of these parents. Instead, these parents view learning as a means to an end to accomplish other things, such as educational success, job security, better jobs, higher incomes, etc. By bringing their children to museums, they are hoping to help their children get ahead. This doesn't mean they don't value learning for its own sake; it isn't a zero-sum game. But it does mean that extrinsic motivations are greater than intrinsic motivations. So if museums help their children become more curious, or have stronger intrinsic motivations to learn about something, that is likely an outcome they are pleased about. It just isn't their primary reason for visiting. And the reverse is true for intrinsically-motivated parents. They want their children to have the skills and knowledge to get ahead in life as well … but they place an even higher value on cultivating curiosity and intrinsic motivations in their children. But here's the challenge: extrinsically-motivated parents greatly outnumber intrinsically-motivated ones. Last fall, I shared the following graphic about the broader population of parents, and my more recent, deeper work generally upholds it. There are just not that many intrinsically-motivated parents.  Visitor Satisfaction When parents are extrinsically motivated, visitor satisfaction rates plummet. Why? Well, extrinsically-motivated parents are not choosing to be there for themselves. This is all about their children. Since it isn't an activity they would otherwise choose, is it any wonder they are the most critical audience segment? This is particularly true of children's museums and science centers, which receive a disproportionate number of extrinsically-motivated parents. At these museums, only one in five parents consider their own intrinsic motivations for visiting … and I see the lowest satisfaction rates of all. The most critical, crabbiest parent of all is actually the parent of a middle-schooler visiting a science center, followed by parents of toddlers at either children's museums and science centers. There is a flip-side to this finding, however: lower visitor satisfaction rates can be an indicator of a museum reaching a broader audience. Parents at history and art museums may be happier, but there are far fewer of them. Which means there are challenges for museums of all types to engage parents. Community Engagement Compared to other regular museum-goers, parents do not feel as connected to their communities. This pattern makes sense, as in my broader work, I'm finding that avid museum-goers have the deepest community ties. Since most museum-going parents are not avid museum-goers (at least, not without their young children), it makes sense that they have lower levels of connection. But there is one concern they have that stood out: they are concerned that people just don't seem to know their neighbors. This may indicate a latent desire to connect in a busy, mobile world … and they don't know how to make that connection. (I'll be coming back to community engagement and museum-going, but for now, the important part to remember is that museum-going parents don't feel as connected to their communities as other regular museum-goers. For a sneak-peek on my thoughts on community engagement, please see my review of Place Attachment on The Curated Bookshelf.) Over the next several research releases, I'll unpeel the many layers of museum-going parents, from who they are, to why it is good to be a selfish parent, to putting real numbers behind the audience losses museums experience as children grow up. 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.
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