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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:
Interesting. There's some good news here and some not-so-good news. 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.
Lath
8/27/2019 08:58:23 am
Curious if this was a general population sample, or a sample of museum goers? Since 75% of Americans don't go to museums, don't knows in a general population sample would not be unexpected. Thanks! 8/27/2019 06:28:50 pm
Hi Lath - It is a broader population sample. I find the result puzzling still because it is so much higher than everything else (most people don't know much about labor unions these days, for example), and because while a large chunk says "don't know" for this question, that isn't consistent with repeated samples that finds the vast majority of Americans find museums trustworthy. So … puzzling.
Kenneth C Turino
4/23/2020 11:41:36 am
Very useful Susie Comments are closed.
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