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 Aberdeen Museum of History, June 2018. 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:
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):
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:
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:
And a few, a very few, just said nope.
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? 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.  "I visit local museums to feel a part of my world. On vacations, I visit museums to discover worlds that differ from my own." - This and all quotes from respondents of the 2018 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers
Introduction Sense of place. That fuzzy something that makes each different city or place different. That gives it character, and personality, setting it apart from other cities or communities. The idea that museums contribute to a sense of place in individual cities and communities isn't new; it comes up periodically in our field. It is also an idea that pops up fairly regularly in my work with museum-goers, especially when they share with me that they cannot imagine going on vacation somewhere without visiting the local museums. But while I think that it is lovely when people plan trips around museums, there's a harder question that I think is more important: how do local museums contribute to a sense of place on a community by community basis? That is, not how the Metropolitan Museum of Art helps define New York City for visiting museum-goers, but how someplace like the White County Historical Society contributes to a sense of place in Cleveland, Georgia for its residents. That local question, however, is harder to answer. In the 2018 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers, two different lines of inquiry were followed in the survey: parents of minor children received a set of questions that were explored earlier this year on The Data Museum, and all other respondents received two open-ended sense of place questions. (Note: the fact that parents of minor children were not included in these questions shouldn't affect the results, as the questions are not related to parental status; that being said, you should still take their omission from the sample under consideration as you read this post. Methodology matters.) To put respondents in the mindset to answer that local sense of place question, they were first asked to consider how museums contribute to the sense of place of the destinations they visited when traveling. After that "warm up" question, they were ready to tackle the harder question asking them to reflect on how their local museums may or may not contribute to sense of place in their own community. A Sense of Place When Traveling First up, the numbers. Two-thirds of respondents said yes, museums absolutely contribute to the sense of place in communities they visit. Another third responded in ways that were not clear (I'm a conservative coder, so while most probably agreed, if they were not clear then I didn't code it), and only 2% of respondents disagreed and didn't think museums contributed at all. Given the clear, large majority agreed, it begs the question of why they felt this way. It boiled down to museum-goers wanting more than a superficial experience of a place. Instead, they wanted to dig deeper, and begin to figure out the hows and whys of a place. In part, it was a reaction to what was described as a "mono-culture," as in this comment:
And a desire for context, as in this comment:
No surprise, history came up a lot. Respondents felt that understanding how a place came to be was vital to capturing that sense of place:
But a sense of "culture," loosely defined, was nearly as important.
For a significant number of respondents, however, it went beyond history, culture, and natural landscape/geography (a small number explicitly mentioned that) to gaining an understanding about the values of a community.
Ultimate, however, the underlying theme that came out of analyzing over 1,600 of these comments was that museums are about our shared humanity, wherever they are.
And what makes this theme of shared humanity and the human condition so important is that it is one that shows up consistently, and repeatedly, in my work … regardless of what types of museums are being considered. And I have to say, I think it is a pretty amazing thing for museums to do and to receive credit for doing. Of course, considering how museums contribute to the sense of place to new places one visits is one thing … but what about on a local level? Does the everyday immersion of life skew one's perspective on how museums contribute to a sense of place locally? We'll look at that next. Make the 2019 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers possible! 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. Several months ago, the book American Generosity completely changed how I thought about how and why people engage with their world. In particular, they described people's generosity (which includes civic engagement) in terms of capacity. Everyone has different capacities to engage, and those capacities are rooted in socio-economic status, upbringing, childhood experiences, peer groups, and other factors. It wasn't judgmental. It could have been. They could have said "someone who doesn't even give a dollar to charity is a jerk." But they didn't automatically make that assumption. Instead, through the lens of capacity, they found much more nuance, and by not being judgmental, it was easier to see how deeper change can be affected. I'm going to try and do likewise. Because I think the capacity approach is crucial not only to generosity, but to civic engagement and to lifelong learning. That matters, and deeply, to museums. (You'll see me refer to American Generosity, based on work done by the Science of Generosity Initiative at the University of Notre Dame, a few times as I continue to share research. I strongly encourage you to read my review of it on The Curated Bookshelf. Then you can decide if you want to dig through the book itself.) Which brings me to the disengaged. In my broader population work last fall, I kept looking at this group of people. Because, first of all, they are not generally museum-goers. As a field, we talk constantly about broadening our audiences across different demographic and socio-economic dimensions. These are those individuals. But it isn't that it is a world of either people who visit museum or those who don't. It is much bigger than that. The disengaged are far less civically engaged. They feel less connected to their communities. Additionally, they have fewer concerns about, less interest in, and do far fewer things in their communities. And when it comes to politics, they are more likely to say they don't care about politics than to identify themselves anywhere on the political spectrum. In American Generosity, when describing individuals who fit into this category of disengagement, they wrote about them, well, generously. They described individuals focused on providing for themselves and their families at the basic level of food, shelter, clothing, medicine. They described individuals with their heads down, working multiple jobs to provide for their families, or to save for their children's educations. And they described people who came from backgrounds of want, who psychologically need to feel any future rainy days are taken care of. In those descriptions, I could see why museums don't fit in. Or even community engagement or political engagement. It is a very inward focus, and one most of us have. I know I am focused on providing for my family, making sure college educations will be paid for, and that a rainy day doesn't set us back. You probably are as well. But I have resources. Or, privilege. I'm well-educated, my spouse is well-educated, and that inward focus doesn't take 100% of my attention. I have capacity. Capacity to look up and see what is, first, going on in the world directly around me (my community), and then the world more broadly. Capacity to engage with both. And capacity to continue to educate myself about both, meaning time to read books, visit museums, and be generous to others in need. To my utmost capacity. You probably do too. We're peers. And we are in that biggest bubble in the illustration below from American Generosity (I don't like their term "professional;" I'd replace that with engagement with broader world). That makes us privileged, and it is incumbent on us to not only acknowledge that, but to be more understanding of those who have less capacity than we have.  Source: American Generosity, by Patricia Snell Herzog and Heather E. Price Because where this bubble chart is actually misleading is the size of the bubbles. In reality, it is more like a Maslow's hierarchy, and the individuals at the apex (which I would call "broader world - lifestyle generosity") are a small sliver of the population, while far more people fall in those other bubbles/lower in the hierarchy. How many? Good question. A lot. In my 2017 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers, virtually all respondents are engaged with their communities to some degree. But most people who are focused 100% on self or familial (or friend) sufficiency are not museum-goers. Museum-goers, it turns out, are outliers. But a fair number of the disengaged do show up in my broader population work. And here it becomes really complicated. Bear with me, and let's walk through making an estimate about the population. The typical markers of disengagement are, in my work, feeling "not very" connected to a community and/or not caring about politics. Those folks, overwhelmingly, are disengaged individuals who do little in their community and are unlikely to visit museums (among other markers). They comprise 42% of my broader population sample, but I want to be conservative. Let's knock it down a bit. To 30% of my sample. But when I look at individuals who say they are only "somewhat" connected to their community, their response patterns to questions about their community and museum engagement are very similar to the disengaged. They comprise 30% of my sample, but not all are disengaged. I'll be conservative and say half are. So 30% + 15% = 45% And then there are the people who feel very connected to their communities by virtue of birth. Turns out, feeling connected in this way does not necessarily mean engagement. About half are "rooted in place" by choice, and are engaged and active citizens (and more likely to be museum-goers). But about half are "tied to place" by default, and their other responses indicate that they are, you got it, disengaged. 15% of my sample were very connected by birth; the half that are "tied to place" then comprise 7.5%. Let's be conservative again and say 5%. So 45% + 5% = 50% Scary number. But there's more. Survey bias. If you go back and read my introduction to the 2017 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers, you'll read about the blind spot that every broader population sample has. A large segment of the population that surveys never reach in the first place. To be conservative, let's say that 30% of the population never see these surveys at all (and never seeing surveys in the first place is a sure-fire sign of disengagement). So, my 50% above is of that 70% of the population represented in broader population surveys. 50% of that 70% is 35%. Which means 35% sampled + 30% never sampled = 65% Two-thirds of the population isn't that engaged with their communities or the broader world. Seem high? Maybe. But remember, disengagement doesn't mean they never vote (many do, especially in presidential elections). Yet this explains the low levels of voting in local elections, why it is always the same people that volunteer and run local organizations, and why so few Americans have visited a museum in the past year. This doesn't mean that 65% of Americans are never generous, never paying attention to their communities, or that they don't care, however. My research indicates significantly lower levels of engagement, but not necessarily zero engagement. Additionally, my handful of surveys, like every other survey in the world, are imperfect. My surveys are not capturing neighborhood dynamics. Or engagement with informal neighborhood networks. Or desires for more involvement. They also don't capture capacity to engage that would increase dramatically if economic necessities were taken care of. That's a lot more nuance than a few surveys can tell us about. Yet you have to start somewhere. What about museums? Does this mean that the broadest audience we can hope for is 35% of the population? Because if that's true, we've pretty much tapped that out in terms of casual + regular visitation. Actually, I think to the contrary. It means there is a huge potential for delivering impact in truly meaningful ways. And it all has to do with motivation. The vast majority of that two-thirds of the disengaged population (as well as a fair number of the engaged), are extrinsically-motivated learners. Yet we know from my work about the value of museums that museums can make a difference in lives, and deliver meaningful impact. Museums can do so in ways that meet the explicit needs of the extrinsically motivated. We're not going to convince them by talking about the joy of discovery or unleashing creativity, however. We have to be more pragmatic about it and deliver content that meets their needs, where they are, with outcomes that matter to them. Their kids will do better in school. This will help them land a better job. And so on. In no way does that diminish our missions because this pragmatic approach does not preclude the joy of discovery or the unleashing of creativity. We can do both. In fact, I'm not sure anyone else can do both as effectively. And, finally, a word about jerks. While I appreciate the nuance and sensitivity around thinking about engagement through a capacity lens, let's be honest. There are some people who are just jerks that don't care about others. They can have billions of dollars, power, and influence. And they can be stuck in the self or familial sufficiency bubbles. Not because they lack capacity but because they are jerks. I'm making the assumption that these individuals are outliers, and are not at all typical. The exceptions that prove the rule. I hope you do likewise. But that doesn't mean it isn't prudent to be aware of them and, when necessary, resist them. Or, even better, reach them in meaningful, even transformative ways. I'm optimistic. 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 these surveys 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. Mobility. When we think of regular museum-goers, we often (correctly) think about them in terms of being well-educated professionals. But we don't generally think about the mobility that comes with that education. But educated people tend to have more options in life, and that includes where they live. This contributes to brain-drain from some communities, where college-bound youth typically don't return after graduation, while other communities teem with young, well-educated adults (Silicon Valley, Seattle, Brooklyn). Thus, it is more likely that our local visitors are not born-and-bred locals. In my 2017 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers, only one in five respondents said they felt "very" connected to their community because they had lived there all their lives. (And I suspect most of them are "rooted in place" by choice, unlike in broader population samples.) But a third of museum-goers feel deeply connected through their own efforts. They worked hard to put down deep roots in the community they settled in as an adult. Which brings us to life stage, mobility, and community engagement. Mobility tends to happen at specific times in people's lives, and that matters for community engagement over a lifetime. (So does arts consumption and museum-going, as I mentioned before, and will cover in more detail soon.) So let's first look at the patterns in the data about regular museum-goers.  Young Adults Under 40, no children
These young adults are highly mobile and, as relatively new residents, haven't really put down roots. Among museum-goers, they are the least connected to their communities, with only a third saying they felt "very" connected. They are also twice as likely as other museum-goers to not feel connected at all. Why? Well, they are far more likely to be single, living in a community they moved in to. The only community networks they have are likely to be through their work (which may or may not be conducive to developing community connections) and any friends they have made. Breaking into a community is hard. Yet that doesn't mean they don't care about their communities. Indeed, they are the least likely segment to say that they think their community is doing "fine," and they are the most likely to have concerns about their community. Additionally, in my broader population work, young adults were the most likely to value local museums and libraries (as well as other amenities such as a diverse population, access to parks and nature, and interesting restaurants and food markets). My question for museums, then, is how can help young adults build broader and deeper community networks in the communities they live? This has to go beyond evening events (though those help) to additional initiatives designed to help these concerned young adults connect and engage with their communities. Bonus: museums become even more relevant in the process. Parents with Young Children Museum-going parents with young children, we now know, tend to be extrinsically motivated. That extends to their community engagement as well. While two-fifths feel "very" connected to their communities, it varies widely based on motivation: intrinsically-motivated parents are about a third more likely to feel deeply connected than extrinsically-motivated parents (57% do). And since the vast majority of museum-going parents of young children are extrinsically motivated, it is not a surprise that this segment of respondents had the fewest concerns about their community. Perhaps an indication that they are not engaged enough with their community to know what to be concerned about. Why? I suspect it has to do with depth of engagement. Both sets of parents likely found parenthood was a catalyst for developing a more extensive community network. Suddenly, via children, the local network expands … quickly. But intrinsically-motivated parents were likely more engaged in their communities before children, because it suited their needs and interests and because engagement in arts and museums specifically is a predictor of prosociality and cooperation, as other studies have found as well (even when controlling for education and income). Their quality of engagement is thus deeper, and likely more diverse, than parents whose engagement is primarily via their children. This has some interesting outcomes when we consider museum type. Parents of young children who visit history or art museums regularly (and are more intrinsically motivated) are more deeply connected to their communities and have more concerns about their communities than parents of young children who visit children's museums or science centers regularly (and are more extrinsically motivated). Which suggests that children's museums and science centers have an opportunity here to consider ways that they can help their captive audience of extrinsically-motivated parents connect more deeply, and thus deliver greater community impact through an even more civically-engaged population. How? A start might be by considering ways parents can get to know their neighbors better. After all, not knowing neighbors was their top concern, with 38% flagging it. Parents of Tweens and Teens As we saw in my recent releases on The Parent Bubble, by middle school we have lost most (but not all) extrinsically-motivated parents and their children as regular museum-goers. Museum-going parents of tweens and teens are more likely to be intrinsically-motivated. And since they are older, and intrinsically-motivated, they have had both more time and reason to develop deeper community connections: over half feel "deeply" connected. Broader population samples, however, hint at something else going on. When it comes to interest in and activity levels in a community, there seems to be a pulling-back among this segment. That is, as children become more independent, community engagement with the parents contracts slightly. We see this manifest itself clearly with The Parent Bubble, as museum-going drops significantly. But it comes out in other ways too as children no longer drive parental engagement as much. Dropping off children at events requires far less involvement than staying and supervising (and chatting with others). I'll be looking for better ways to track this "midlife malaise" as research progresses, but retaining these parents as museum-goers may be a start. Older Adults, no minor children Among museum-goers, older adults have the deepest connection to their communities: 61% feel deeply connected. It makes sense. They are intrinsically-motivated, and they have likely spent longer time in their communities, having settled in and deepened roots (2.5x more likely to say they have put down deep roots than young adults). Despite that, young adults without children, as I mentioned earlier, have more concerns about their community than even this segment. True, older adults are more concerned about an aging population, but they are less concerned about knowing neighbors, or the needs of at-risk children, and so on. Broader population samples reflect some, but not all, of these patterns. Connection to community stabilizes in middle age, and stays relatively steady through the older years. But older adults were less interested in their community, and its amenities, than younger adults. More broadly, older adults vote more, but engage less with their communities than younger adults. Why? My initial findings indicate it has to do with educational attainment. Community engagement and education go hand-in-hand. Since older adults have lower levels of educational attainment, they have overall lower levels of community engagement. And that also means lower levels of museum-going. Older adult museum-goers are, it turns out, outliers of engagement. But that indicates a huge growth opportunity for museums. We have a rapidly aging population. We'll be beset with ever-increasing healthcare needs as they age. Healthy aging is going to be critically important to help seniors in their old age so that they live the best lives they can for as long as possible, benefiting themselves, their families, and healthcare costs. Museums are fantastic at providing both social and cognitive benefits, which all support overall well-being (see my research reviews of The Social Wellbeing of New York City's Neighborhoods and Creative Health: The Arts for Health and Wellbeing for evidence of impact). Our communities, and our healthcare system, need places like museums. By engaging more seniors with museums, and encouraging their greater community engagement, we truly serve our communities well. But what about socio-economic status? To reinforce, most of what I shared in this essay is about well-educated museum-goers. Yes, I brought in work from broader population sampling to support my conclusions, but the broader work is more complicated, largely due to socio-economic status, lower educational attainment, and structural racism. I'll begin to unpack that 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 these surveys 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 struggling with how I release my research findings on community engagement. It would be easy for readers to come away from them thinking that all individuals who are intrinsically motivated to learn are also the most engaged in their communities and the most altruistic. When, actually, an intrinsically motivated person can be a total jerk. And it would also be easy to come away from this series thinking that extrinsically-motivated individuals are "not as good as" intrinsically-motivated ones because they are less likely to be engaged in their communities and are less likely to be altruistic. But that hides the fact that there are some highly engaged, highly altruistic individuals who just happen to be more extrinsically motivated than intrinsically motivated. After all, motivations are not a zero-sum game, and individual can have high degrees of both … and I'm looking at which one they have more of. But there are many reasons why people are, or are not, highly engaged in their communities, or with museums. So I'll share what the data shows me, from my 2017 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers as well as broader population sampling, in as clinical way as possible. I also beg of you to please remember that these are generalizations based on the overall patterns in the data, and should not be taken as character assessments of any individual person. Every individual person is different, and has different capacities for engagement and learning that may be rooted in socioeconomic status, upbringing, and other influences. And yes, a few people are just jerks. Now, that being said, let's dive in. As a field, we are pretty obsessed about community engagement. At least when it comes to our museums. But let's be honest. Generally, we talk about community engagement as more people involved with our museums. That's too narrow (and self-serving). I want to change our perspective on community engagement, and turn it around to think about what it is, as individuals, we really want for our communities. And that is healthy communities. Communities that are productive, have a high quality of life, and that provide a good education for children. Communities that support overall wellness from birth to death, thus contributing to our broader society as well. That means safety, good schools, solid infrastructure, quality affordable housing, and healthcare. But it also means libraries, parks, and places to come together. Vibrant downtowns. Active community centers. The things that make our communities places we care about, and that make us, individually, better able to contribute to our communities as well. Engagement in our communities means being a full participant in those things. But my research indicates that there are wide disparities in individual levels of community engagement. There are segments of the population that have extremely low levels of connection to their community. And there are others that have much higher levels of connection (with a whole of people falling somewhere in between). To a considerable extent, this correlates with socioeconomic status, but not entirely. I also see shifting patterns of community engagement by life stage. Museum-going is another indicator of community engagement. That is, the more someone feels connected to their community, and the more they engage with their community, the more likely they are to be a museum-goer. (A recent UK study supports this; see my review on The Curated Bookshelf.) In all of these cases, however, there's underlying nuance and variations that are important to consider. Additionally, I am mindful that the questions I asked in my surveys are about traditional, structural things (like libraries and infrastructure) on a community level. That means I likely didn't capture more personal, neighborhood-based connections and engagement … and that may matter. Over the next few essays, I'll explore community engagement by life stage and more broadly (which includes socioeconomic status), and then put all of it back into the context of museums and our work, so that we can, indeed, do more for our communities. 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 these surveys 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.  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.  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. |