Curiosity. Empathy. Social justice. All things many museums care about. But how do they come together? Download this long-form Data Story PDF to learn more!

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

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

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

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

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

So I fielded it.

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

For museums:

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

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

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

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

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

MUSEUMS: 50 - 4 =  46

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

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

We all know we live in, well, interesting times. Especially when it comes to history, identity, and inclusion.

These interesting times are opening up fears and challenges in ways that are sometimes unexpected. Such as in the 2018 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers.

This survey didn't focus history specifically. Or inclusionary interpretation and practices. Or social justice.  (If you are looking for that audience research, stay tuned … I'm deep in analysis of new research fielded this fall.)

But the survey did ask about the impact of museums, and a handful of respondents took the opportunity to share their thoughts about these topics, likely because it was on their mind and this was an opportunity to do so.

So I did what every good researcher does: I flagged them. Clearly, this is something important that we need to know about.

Let's start, however, by backing up and considering history specifically.

No museums = no history

For many museum-goers (and the broader population as well), museums are repositories of history. Since museums house the tangible remainders of the past, they embody history. Just look at the sense of loss and national identity in Brazil after the catastrophic fire at their National Museum.
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Similarly, when I asked museum-goers last winter to consider their community (or the world) without museums, many suggested that, without museums, history and identity would be lost:

Given that heavy responsibility (and opportunity) for museums, perhaps it shouldn't be a surprise then that presenting more inclusive history stirs a response.

Revisionist history fears (the unsolicited comments)

Since the survey didn't ask about history methodology, inclusive history practices, or social justice, only a handful of respondents spontaneously brought up these topics. That should be absolutely clear, as these comments are not representative of all museum-goers. But there were enough of them to suggest that the concerns they raise (as well as the appreciation some expressed) are more widespread.
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The majority of comments I flagged did not care for history being "changed." Examples include:

​Some seemed both critical and contradictory at the same time:

To be honest, I'm not sure how history can be presented in ways that we both learn from the past and not touch on politics and/or social justice and/or other difficult history.

And while no one actually used the term "revisionist history," it was a lurking undercurrent. There was a clear sense that history as they felt it should be presented was the appropriate history, and likely aligned with the type of history many museums presented throughout most of the twentieth century: white history. Similarly, there seemed to be a lack of awareness that other stories, voices, and perspectives of the past are equally valid, illuminate history more clearly, and sometimes give a more accurate and complete account of the past.

The cynic in me would also like to point out that most museum-goers, and the broader population, also think museums should present all perspectives of the past. Apparently, for some, what they want in theory (all perspectives) isn't what they want in reality if they are crying foul when those more inclusive perspectives are actually shared.

Frustrating, isn't it?

How we handle this, however, matters deeply. 81% of Americans trust the information presented by history museums and historic sites. But in this age of alternative facts and divisive opinions, that trust is fragile. And while I don't have specific recommendations right now (… analyzing fresh research on the topic now), failing to present a more complete, inclusive history perpetuates a greater wrong to the real truth of history, and all that that means.
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I'll leave you, however, with a far more hopeful comment that I also flagged for similar, yet totally different, reasons. I'll let it speak for itself.

Click on the image for a downloadable (and printable) PDF.

- NEW - 2019 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers Research Themes Announcement

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?
• And would custom results about your museum's stakeholders help even more?

If so, enroll your museum in the 2019 Annual Survey of Museum Goers, and 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. 

​Click on the image for a downloadable (and printable) PDF.

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?
  
• And would custom results about your museum's stakeholders help even more?
  

If so, enroll your museum in the 2019 Annual Survey of Museum Goers, and 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. 

"Museums represent humanity in all of its breadth, wonder, rawness and beauty. A world without museums would be less human. Simple as that."
- Respondent, 2018 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers

It's the question we all ask ourselves, all the time: What is the impact of museums?

Yet within this question lie many deeper questions. What is the impact we have on children? On adults? Our communities? Is there a ripple effect, with those who don't visit museums still benefiting in some way?

The initial answer is yes, of course. No question we have impact. But defining that impact, isolating it to museums, measuring it, assessing our effectiveness, well, we all know that is far trickier.
Yet nothing is more important to measure. After all, this is the articulation of why we matter, not only to those who visit us, but to everyone.

Unsurprisingly, then, impact was a big theme in the 2018 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers and Broader Population Sampling. And the good news is that both museum-goers and non-visitors happen to think we do some pretty great things.

Overall Findings - Museum-Goers

So what are the top five impacts of museums, according to museum-goers? In descending order, that museums make us:

1. More knowledgeable (74%)
2. More curious about the world (66%)
3. More well-rounded/broadened horizons (61%)
4. More understanding of other viewpoints and/or greater empathy (43%)
5. More creative (37%)

Pretty fantastic, right? And what is fascinating for me to see is that when I look at all of the cross tabs and filters that help me segment museum-goers, I see that these impacts are fairly consistent, regardless of life stage, demographics, and geography (I'm thinking red state/blue state). Sure, there's some movement and nuance (we'll get to that), but overall, the values that underlie these impacts are universal.

(Respondents could also write in other impacts, and some great things were shared, but nothing really jumped out as significant.)

Broader Population

My broader population sampling returned a similar, but not exactly the same, ranking. In this case, however, the majority of respondents are non-visitors projecting impact on those who do visit museums.

1. More knowledgeable (55%)
2. More curious about the world (50%)
3. More creative (35%)
4. More well-rounded/broadened horizons (34%)
5. More understanding of other viewpoints and/or greater empathy (31%)

But while the overall percentages were lower for the broader population (not a surprise), it is interesting to note that the percentage responding "more creative" is actually pretty consistent across both samples. 

What's Next to Share

These top impacts do, of course, merit more scrutiny around who, how, and why. I'll be looking at four of these impacts more closely, and sharing more nuance, over the coming weeks.

Supplementing this quantitative work was an open-ended question museum-goers were asked to consider: imagine a community or world with no museums. Turns out, the loss-aversion tactic works really well in helping people articulate the role museums have played in their lives. These responses will flesh out the how and why of what I share.

The responses were also overwhelmingly heartfelt and stridently in support of the significant role museums play in people's lives. So much so that every day I post a new, randomly chosen, response and share it on my Facebook page and Twitter feed (@susiewilkening). Follow me in either place for a daily dose of "hey, you matter!"

But I want to push back a bit on the one impact I won't be focusing on: well-rounded/broadened horizons. To be fair, I think this is a fantastic impact, and is one I would certainly choose for myself and for what I hope museums are doing for my own children. That being said … the values it embraces are inherent in the other four impacts. Indeed, I would say being well-rounded, with broader horizons, comes as a result of the knowledge, curiosity, empathy, and creativity that museums cultivate.

I'll wrap up this series with a release on revisionist history. Because even though that wasn't my question (at least, not in this survey), some comments on Confederate monuments, and a perception of the past being "changed" came through. They may have only been a handful of comments, but the themes they reflect, in today's polarized society, matter deeply to our work.


Methodology Notes
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In my 2017 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers, I asked respondents to share with me what they felt the impact of museums in their life had been. Their open-ended responses were amazing, and I shared many of them last year in a series of posts. For 2018, I took the most common themes from those answers and created a close-ended question so that we could assess what percentage of museum-goers had experienced each outcome. I then developed a similar question for the broader population, asking them to identify the impact of museums on those that visit.

But asking about impact directly doesn't always give museum-goers room to articulate the role museums actually place in their lives. In the 2017 survey, one respondent mused, “Can you imagine a world without museums?” Great question, so I included it.


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. 

Approach any museum-going parent or caregiver on the floor of your museum and ask them why they are there. I bet you they say things like the museum is educational, fun for kids, and/or it is a good place for the family to visit. All fantastic reasons for visiting.

But those reasons, wonderful as they are, don't really help us understand what the impact of museums are for children or their caregivers. Why? Well, impact is harder to articulate. It is harder to see. Parents and caregivers can see their kids learning and having fun, but to extrapolate out to what impact those new learnings have, well, that's harder.

Yet it matters. Deeply. Hardly anyone questions that museums are educational (97% of Americans agree they are, as we found when I did public polling for AAM). But lots of experiences are educational. Thus,  if we need to make a case for why museums matter (and we do), we need to not only say we are educational, but why what we do is better than other experiences, delivering better impact.

In the 2018 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers it was important to get a better handle on impact by building on the 2017 Survey's open-ended question on impact (The overall results will be explored more thoroughly in research releases to come.)

When it comes to impact, 70% of parents said that museums helped make them more curious about the world, their top choice. This was followed by "more knowledgeable" and "more well-rounded/broadened horizons."

But the curiosity thing was, well, curious. And that's because it isn't an explicit motivation.

That is, only 21% of parents of children 10 and younger chose "curiosity" as a motivation for visiting museums … yet it was the most important impact of museums, with 71% choosing it. 

Additionally, 94% of these parents say it is more important for museums to cultivate curiosity than help children perform better academically.

So what's going on? Clearly, curiosity isn't the quick-to-articular motivation for visiting museums. Those other reasons (learning, fun, family time) are more immediate, pressing, and motivating. Curiosity, while a highly valued impact, isn't any of those things but instead takes a lifetime to cultivate and benefit from.

The immediacy of those other things, and the longer-term horizon of curiosity, creates an impact/articulation gap that turns out to be really important, especially when we back up and examine this more broadly.

To start, while only 6% of museum-going parents said it was more important for museums to focus on academic achievement than curiosity, 26% of the broader population of parents said likewise. Looking at that 26% of the broader population of parents, and also the 6% of museum-going parents, was illuminating. In both samples, these respondents were significantly less likely to have a college degree. Additionally, among the museum-goers, they were nearly three times more likely to be parents of color (even when controlling for education). Both groups were also significantly less likely to cite curiosity as an impact of museums overall.

The marked difference in education in both groups (and likely, by extension, socio-economic status) is troubling, as is the difference between whites and people of color. I don't know why the difference, and I say that because I haven't asked. That is something that absolutely needs to be done.

I do, however, have a hypothesis. It is easy for well-educated museum-going parents (who are also overwhelmingly white) to say that curiosity is a necessity. That having a curious outlook yields better outcomes in life (which research does tend to support). But curiosity is expensive. It is expensive to nurture because it is an ever-hungry beast that needs resources to feed it. It needs museum visits, books, camps, and supplies. It also needs adult time and energy to feed. All of those cost parents and guardians in some way, and that makes nurturing curiosity a privilege that some parents have capacity to provide, but many cannot. (I've written some about capacity before; it bears reviewing.)

For those who are working hard to take care of their families, but have limited capacities to do more due to external constraints in their lives, it would be easy to see a direct line between academic achievement and better outcomes … even if that direct line doesn't directly take into account what motivates someone to achieve in the first place. And for respondents of color, I hypothesize that the negative economic outcomes resulting from systemic racism may have a similar result, even when educational attainment does reach the highest levels.

I also realize, however, that my hypotheses may be misguided or wrong. If so, and you have your own hypotheses, I encourage you to share them with me so that future phases of research can incorporate those ideas as well.

But given the essential birthright all of us have to curiosity, if my hypothesis is correct, it is incumbent on museums to do more to provide more opportunities to more children to cultivate curiosity … and thus benefit from it over a lifetime. That is, after all, one of the most important impacts of our work.

And how? It actually goes back to making it easy. Logistically, of course. We're not easy to visit (as we already know), and that has to get better. Reduced/free admission, such as through Museums for All, is a great start, but it also has to be about access, transportation, being welcoming to all, or going to where parents and caregivers already are. We should not underestimate the time and energy costs of visiting as well.

We also need to be an easy solution for all parents in their need to help their children succeed.
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Some museums are working on this through effective partnerships (looking at you, Discovery Museum in Acton, MA, who was recently featured in the New York Times). We need more … much more … of this. But to increase the curiosity capacity in all children, low-income, middle-class, non-visiting families, and yes, our regular museum-goers we already have, we also need an overall image reboot that represents a new value proposition to parents that we are their easy solution to some of the pressures and obligations they have, as parents, in their lives.

And then we need to make it 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.