The leisure time crunch. It's what parents experience on most weekends … a list of things that need to get done, children to keep an eye on, children to shuttle around, and then falling into bed, exhausted. As shared earlier, 45% of museum-going parents report they get zero relaxation during leisure time.

So if you have a busy family, and exhausted parents, where do museums fit in? Are museums an obligation, something one does for children (just like all good parents do), or is visiting fun and relaxing? And how does all of this affect what parents think about the impact of museums?

Let's take a look at what parents said in the 2018 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers, and try to sort this out.

Exhausted Parents

First, the bad news. Exhausted parents are more critical museum visitors. Compared to parents who felt more relaxed at the end of the weekend, exhausted parents were:

• Less likely to say museums contribute to quality of life
• More likely to say visiting museums is "hard work"
• Reported fewer impacts of museums in their lives
• And just generally had more negative responses

I'm not surprised. I have those weekends too, and they make me crabby as well. Sometimes the idea of an "enrichment" activity for my kids makes me want to go hide under the covers. So it is no wonder that, for many museum-going parents, museums are seen as yet something else to fit in, and thus somewhat painful to visit.

The Pain/Pleasure Index

So how painful is it really to visit museums? To find out, I asked parents if visiting museums was more work or more pleasure. Respondents were given a slider, and asked to choose where visiting museums fell, which turned into a numeric score for me (which was then easy for me to average across segments; thus, if 100% of respondents said "total pleasure", the score would be 100, while a score of 0 would mean 100% of respondents said "hard work").

Overall, parents scored museums a 55 … only slightly more pleasurable than painful. Not a great result. Two factors were most likely to affect the score:

• Age of children: it dropped to 49 for parents of children young children (<5) and goes up to 60 (somewhat more pleasurable!) for parents of elementary schoolers and tweens/teens; and
• Parental stress: the more stressed parents report being, the lower the score, while "relaxed and ready for a new week" parents score higher.

But then it gets more interesting. The more parents visit, the more likely they are to consider museums "hard work." Additionally, those recurring visitors (especially with younger children) are more critical of museums and have generally more negative responses overall. (Note the opposite is true among those who are not parents of minor children: then, more visits then equals happier visitors.)

The pattern, then, is of stressed, high-visitation rate parents who feel obliged to visit museums in order to provide their children with enrichment and learning, but just are too exhausted to enjoy it themselves.

Since these stressed-out parents are nearly half of museum-going parents, and it isn't like the other half are relaxed and engaged 100% of the time either, it begs the question: what can museums do to make visiting museums a stress reducer in parents' lives? How can we be a solution in their lives, not just one more thing to cram in?

And if we can figure this out, would it make visiting museums more appealing for casual and non-visitors as well?


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. 

As we continue to explore leisure time, commitments, and relaxation (and what it means for museum time), we've learned that, well, it's complicated. The broader population is both more and less stressed when it comes to relaxation and getting things done during leisure time. Doing more during leisure time doesn't necessarily contribute to less relaxation (it depends). And leisure time commitments shift and change over life stage.

If we back up, however, what are some big conclusions that we can draw?

The Rule of Thirds

Let's take a look back at the graphic I shared earlier, focusing on the broader population side. Notice something? It breaks down roughly in thirds. That is, about a third of Americans are getting no relaxation during their leisure time, about another third are getting some, and a final third are relaxed and ready for a new week. (Sure, these numbers are not exact, but they are close enough when it comes to making it easy for you to remember. Interesting aside: the Rule of Thirds is something I see a lot of in my work when examining the broader population. I could/should write a book on this.)

More activities does not mean less relaxation.

The "Do Mores" who do more seem to cluster at "satisfied/somewhat relaxed." That is, those who do more are, surprisingly, more likely to get some relaxation than those that do less. Adding museum visits to the schedule doesn't necessarily mean less time to relax.

Additionally, the Do Mores are the most likely to visit museums; about a third of those who do four to five things in their leisure time, and over half of those who do seven or more things. This indicates that there are opportunities for museums to reach more "Do Mores" … especially if they begin to think of museums as relaxing places and/or places where they can accomplish multiple things at once.

Fewer activities does correlate with more stress.

Those who say they get no relaxation at all during their leisure time actually, on average, do fewer things during that time. Indeed, those who only do one or two activities during their leisure time are the least likely to feel they have any time to relax.

If your first reaction to that is "what the heck are they doing then?" you are not alone. That was my instinctive reaction as well, but it isn't a particularly understanding/thoughtful reaction because, as we all know, life is more complicated than that. Time constraints are only one stressor in our lives. We have to keep in mind that there are many other stressors that affect this response, including financial, family medical and health issues, job pressures, etc.

Additionally, for non-visitors, a visit to museum may be too our-of-the-ordinary to not feel stressful as well. What do I mean? Some studies have shown that people perceive places they know to be physically closer (and thus easier to get to) than places they don't know. It is human nature to travel further to go the grocery store we know than the closer one we don't know. We'll even say the known grocery store is closer, when actually it is further! If we do that, then think how far away a museum feels to a person who hasn't been to a museum since a fourth-grade field trip. Even if they pass by one every day. Combine that with those potential stressors we don't know about (but matter deeply), and it becomes much easier to see why museums don't fit into more people's lives.

A Word About Parents

Which brings us to parenting, relaxation (or lack thereof) and museums. Parents don't find museums relaxing.

Let me repeat that. Parents don't find museums relaxing. 

The research already shows that parents over-index among those who feel they have zero time to relax. Now consider taking a three-year-old who is in the middle of toilet training to a museum. (Especially if the museum only has automatic toilets; ARGH!  Just thinking about that in my not-so-distant past stresses me out, and you know I'm as passionate as they get about museums.)

So when we ask parents to consider visiting museums with their children, or to visit more often, we are asking parents for a lot. Because the research also shows (as I'll share later this summer) that museum-going parents find visiting museums to be about equal parts pain and pleasure. If that's what museum-going parents say, I shudder to consider how casual and non-visitors might respond. Additionally, parents rarely tell me that they find museums relaxing. By and large, it simply doesn't come up.

Clearly, then, there are opportunities to reach more people effectively, and challenges to reach everyone. We knew that already, but this work begins to frame what those challenges are through the leisure time/relaxation lens. Other constraints will be studied in more detail in the 2019 Annual Survey.

Next up: a deeper dive on parents.


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. ​

We all know that we are busy. Busy in our work lives. Busy in our leisure time. And, as I recently shared, museum-goers are extra-busy, especially during their weekends and leisure time.

​But is busyness a steady-state, or does it shift and change over a lifetime?

The answer appears to be yes to both. That is, there are certain attributes that many of the busiest tend to have in common (such as museum-going, but also educational attainment). But there are also significant shifts as life stages evolve. These shifts also, unsurprisingly, affect stress levels. Let's take at what the 2018 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers and broader population sampling told us about leisure time, relaxation, and the three main life stages. 

Young adults without children

Museum-going young adults are busy. The busiest segment of all museum-goers, averaging 4.9 activities during their typical weekends or leisure time. In particular, they are significantly more likely to catch up on sleep (over 2x as likely!), spend time with friends, and pursue personal hobbies. This all sounds fun and relaxing, right?

Not so fast. They were also the most likely segment to catch up on work, and they were statistically even with parents in doing chores and errands. In the end, this busyness doesn't really translate to relaxation, as a third of museum-going young adults report having no chance to relax at all during their leisure time, and only 16% report being "relaxed and ready for a new week."

For the broader population of young adults, the trends were similar. They were also packing more things into their leisure time (3.6 things on average versus 2.8 for the topline/aggregate average). Additionally, they were more likely to report the extremes on relaxation; on the one hand, more young adults from the broader population are getting no relaxation at all (a whopping 43%), but on the other hand, young adults from the broader population are twice as likely as museum-going young adults to feel "relaxed and ready for a new week."

Parents of minor children

"Sometimes I'm overwhelmed with all I need to do at home and hoping I'm good enough for my kids." - respondent to the 2018 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers

That quote alone speaks volumes about the so-called leisure time of parents. Parents, regardless of the age of their children, are busy, and doing the best they can. Museum-going parents averaged 4.7 activities, and parents in the broader population averaged 3.8, higher than the topline average for both.

For parents, leisure time is overwhelmingly work.  They are more likely to be doing chores and errands, of course, but also shuttling children to activities (especially if they had children age 5 and up) and spending time with family (read that as childcare, as it spiked with parents of the youngest children). Additionally, parents are significantly less likely to be spending time on their own personal hobbies (read that as no "me time").

So it should be no surprise that parents are the most likely to report they get no relaxation at all during their leisure time: an appalling 46%. That number is consistent among both museum-going parents as well as parents from the broader population. And it is also consistent regardless of the age of children.

And since only 11% of museum-going parents reported being "relaxed and ready for a new week," that means that the families we are, or hope to be, attracting are not only busy, but headed by stressed adults who are wondering how they are going to get everything done. It means a visit to a museum is yet something else to do (likely for their kids), and scheduling it in is likely tough, requiring tradeoffs. It also means that if museums are going to engage more families, we have to do a better job presenting a value proposition that shows how visiting museums is an easy way to accomplish many goals … thus making it easier to make it a higher priority, and less of an obligation.

Or, in other words, that a museum visit can be that learning and fun activity for children, promote great family time, and maybe, just maybe, help parents pursue their own interests and hobbies as well.
​
Older adults

Finally, let's look at older adults. For museum-goers, they averaged only 4.1 activities during their leisure time, and for the broader population, only 3.2.

That lower level of activity translated into lower levels of stress as well, with only 17% of older museum-going adults saying they received no relaxation at all (for reference, parents were nearly 3x more likely to say no relaxation).

The broader population of older adults, however, showed considerably more stress than their museum-going peers, however, with a third saying they had no chance to relax at all.

That difference in stress levels between older museum-goers and the broader population, however, is a potent reminder that, regardless of life stage, stress comes in many forms. While time constraints are one potential form of stress, this research doesn't approach measuring other types (such as financial, medical or health, or any other stressors). I'll come back to this topic next time.



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. 

Think back to the last weekend (or time off) that you consider "typical." I bet you were pretty busy, weren't you? Chores and errands, time with family or friends, maybe you had a nice meal. Did you catch up on sleep? Check your work email? Maybe even binge watch something on Netflix?

Did you go to a museum? Be honest here … work doesn't count.

And at the end of that weekend or time off, how did you feel? Did you get everything done? Did you feel relaxed? Even a little?

The thing is, I bet you were busy, packing in a lot of things during two short days. Maybe a museum made the cut, but statistically speaking, probably not. Sometimes it is hard to fit in that museum visit. Life simply gets in the way.

Yet we want museums to be an attractive and realistic option for people in our communities. That means we have to have a strong understanding of how different segments of the population typically spend their leisure time now, so we can understand how museums do, and do not, fit in. It also means understanding the opportunities and responsibilities that people have, which may make visiting a museum more appealing, feel like yet more work to get done, or a virtual impossibility.

To begin to suss all of this out I included a short series of leisure-time questions in the 2018 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers as well as a broader population comparison sample (mostly non-visitors to museums, as well as casual visitors and a small number of avid museum-goers).

Respondents were asked to think back to the last weekend (or time off) they considered "typical," and indicate the things they did. (They could also write in additional activities.) They were then asked to consider how they felt at the end of the weekend.

Quantity of Activities

I like to say that "the do mores do more." It's a spin on "if you want something done, ask a busy person."

Avid museum-goers as well as casual visitors are clearly the do mores, averaging 4.3 activities in their typical weekend. And the more museums people go to, the more they do on a typical weekend; those who visited only one or two museums in the last year averaged 4.1 activities while those who visited five or more averaged 4.7 activities. Museum-goers are busy!

The sample of non-visitors, however, was rather different; they averaged only 2.4 activities, even when museum attendance is controlled for.  (Similarly, the number of activities goes up with educational attainment.)

This tells us that museum-goers are leading more jam-packed lives when it comes to the quantity of things they have to get done PLUS the things they want to get done during non-working time. But I do want to be careful here that this doesn't imply that people who don't visit museums, or those with lower educational attainment, have more time available that museums could fill. It is more complicated than that, in ways that go beyond what my surveys measure. At this point, we are simply assessing leisure time activities, not work obligations, health constraints, or any number of other things that affect leisure time and the choices an individual makes for that time.

But Did They Relax?

No.

In perhaps one of the most discouraging findings I've ever seen, the number of Americans, museum-goers or not, that report at the end of the weekend they are "relaxed and ready for a new week" is depressingly low.

I happen to think that this is a health issue. The fact that so few of us get full relaxation is a problem, and that over a third of the population does not feel a bit relaxed is even more of a problem. This implies our stressful lives are an ever-constant for too many. Or, as one person wrote in, "[this is a] silly question. We are all stressed."

Even worse, I am only capturing this through the lens of time constraints. That is, I'm not capturing economic pressures, family health crises or chronic conditions, job stress, or other internal or external constraints or anxieties that prevent us from having time to take care of ourselves. 

Additionally, my findings are reflected by recent polling done by the American Psychiatric Association, which shows that anxiety is increasing among Americans, noting that the repercussions are a physiological health threat as well as a mental health one.

All of these findings beg some key questions, namely:

• Are there differences by life stage in activity and relaxation levels?
• Are museums seen as one more thing to get done, or even work to visit?
• Or are museums a place of respite, that can address these health concerns in mission-driven ways? If so, can we be that for more people?

I'll address some of these questions in my next few posts.


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. 

The conventional wisdom is that young adults are not that engaged with museums. They don't visit much, and they find museums stale and boring.

My research, however, continues to find the opposite to be true. Indeed, young adults without children are nearly 50% more likely to visit museums than older adults. And last year, my research found that young adult museum-goers are pretty big museum fans; results from the 2018 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers, as well as a broader population comparison sample, reinforces and extends these findings.

Before I share what's new from the latest research, a quick reminder of terms:

• Museum-goers: Individuals who are, in reality, avid museum-goers. They are on a museum email list, follow a museum on social media, and answer museum surveys. About 5% of young adults.
• Casual visitors: Individuals who visit museums, but are not engaged enough to be on a museum email list, follow closely on social media, or respond to museum surveys. Likely just over a third of young adults.
• Broader population: Everyone. So it includes those avid museum-goers, casual visitors, and a lot of non-visitors (non-visitors comprise well over half of young adults).

So what's new about young adults from this latest research?

Leisure Time.

Museum-goers.  I've been known to say that "the do mores do more," and that is certainly true for young adult museum-goers. They are busy, packing more activities into their leisure time than any other segment of museum-goers. Indeed, during their leisure time, they are the most likely visitor segment to report spending time with friends, pursuing a personal hobby, having a nice meal, or even catching up on sleep. But with those activities comes a bit of a price … only 16% of young adults reported that at the end of leisure time they were "completely relaxed and ready for a new week." 41% report they had no chance to relax at all.

Broader population. When we step back and examine the broader population of young adults, including the majority who have not visited a museum recently, we find similar patterns to museum-goers: they are a busy segment of the population. In particular, they were more likely to spend time with friends, pursue personal hobbies, and catch up on sleep.

One key difference, however, is that museum-goers simply do more; this broader population sample chose an average 3.6 activities from the list I provided, while museum-goers averaged 4.9. So while young adults are busy, young adult museum-goers are doing even more. But just like with museum-goers, relaxation is elusive; 43% reported they had no chance to relax at all.

The broader population survey included a question designed to elicit what types of museums would be more attractive to non-visitors. Just like young adults are more likely to have actually visited a museum, young adults chose the most types of museums they would be interested in visiting. In particular, they were nearly 50% more likely than any other segment to say they would like to visit an art museum. Overall, this indicates to me that young adults are a key target audience that is likely more interested in museums than conventional wisdom suggests.

Impact of museums.

Museum-goers. Young adult museum-goers are particularly enthusiastic about museums. Thus, it shouldn't be a surprise then that, when presented with a list of potential impacts museums might have had in their lives, they chose more impacts than any other segment of museum-goers. Their top impacts were: more knowledgeable; more curious about the world; and more well-rounded/broader horizons.
But I was curious myself to find that they were more likely than any other segment to say museums had made them more creative, promoted their cognitive health, and made them feel more connected to their community. This is worth exploring.

• Community connection: Last year, young adults shared that they felt the least connected to their community, but exhibited a yearning for a deeper connection. I suggested that museums could help with this. The fact that museum-goers are the most likely to say that museums do help them feel more connected to their community indicates that museums are, to some degree already playing that role. Just think what we could do if we made a concerted effort on this.

• Cognitive health: This result was also rather interesting, as it is typically portrayed in popular media as a concern for older adults who want to stave off future dementia. AARP, for example, is all over this issue. Yet younger adults were the most likely to say museums had helped them with their cognitive health. This suggests that we should be focusing on life-long cognitive health, including for young adults.

• Creativity: And finally the creativity piece. In our society, we tend to couple creativity with childhood (the "creative class" notwithstanding). But parents were not much more likely than older adults to select creativity as an impact of museums while young adults were significantly higher. Perhaps it is time to decouple creativity from childhood, and instead focus on creativity over the lifetime … particularly during young adulthood.

Broader population. Since young adults were the most likely to have visited a museum recently, it shouldn't be a surprise that, when considering the impact museums have on those who visit them, they selected the most impacts. In particular they were significantly higher than any other segment of the population to cite inspiring curiosity and, yes, creativity. And that creativity impact? It was by a mile. Young adults were 25% more likely than parents to cite it and 50% more likely than older adults, reinforcing that museums may find focusing on creativity is a good way to attract and engage younger adults.

Further commentary.

​The good news here is that young adults clearly like and enjoy museums. Museums matter to them. But I continue to suggest it is museums in the aggregate that matter, not one individual museum. That is, young adults are visiting a variety of museums, which means they are not necessarily making a deep enough connection with one museum to be on the email list, become a member, or even fill out a survey.

Given their visitation patterns, this begs the question of why a community of museums cannot get themselves together to offer a community-wide membership program for young adults. The goal is to engage them in museums overall at higher rates, and that means creating a value proposition that will hook them, open up more avenues for communication, and create more opportunities for individual museums to engage them more deeply. I'm going to be blunt and say that not doing this shows laziness on the part of museums. Yes, there are logistics to figure out, but the barriers to creating this type of membership are put there by museums themselves … not visitors.

And then there is the creativity piece. Since creativity appears to be so highly valued by young adults, museums are in a sweet spot to promote creativity more directly in their programming. But it also leads to some key questions to figure out, such as:

• Why is creativity so important to young adults?
• How does it rank compared to other values? 
• What other resources do they think promote creativity?
• Or is this something we can carve out as a differentiating factor to help museums matter even more to  young adults?
• If so, how?

Over the coming months, I'll be exploring in far more detail the findings on leisure time and impact (among others), which will add to our contextual knowledge about young adults and other segments of the population. Stay tuned!


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.