Working with the 21 historic sites of the National Trust, I have not
discovered any consistencies in the definitions of adult, senior, student,
and child. As an example, "student" is ages 13-17; 13-18; 6-18; 12-18;
6-11; and others. To complicate matters, the titles don't seem to match the
visitor's actual status--isn't a 20-year old attending college a student? Or
a 10-year old fourth grader?
More often than not, the definitions are based on admission pricing
strategy, rather than visitor evaluation or marketing studies. As a result,
the use of attendance figures is not as useful as it could be since they
cannot be easily compared to the census or other museums. When an
organization begins to analyze its attendance history, this weakness quickly
becomes apparent.
Although museums will continue to base admissions on age, they may also wish
to consider separately tracking their visitation to provide useful data for
administration. For example, you may wish charge a lower admission for ages
7-18, but then also track the age group of visitor in ranges of 7-12 and
13-18. You'll probably discover that attendance by teenagers is quite low
compared to the elementary school students--something that wouldn't be
apparent if you grouped them all together in the "student 7-18" category.
As far as I know, there isn't a "museum standard" for these definitions and
each museum needs to define its own, but I would recommend some strategic
planning to guide the process. How will the data be used? For example, the
IMLS often asks applicants to explain how their organization meets the needs
of its community. That requires comparing your visitor data to county/city
data, so you'll want to follow the age break-down of county/city agencies.
We encountered this situation at the Homestead Museum in California a couple
years ago, and as a result dramatically revised its attendance tracking,
moving from four age groups to seven, as follows:
Children (0-6 years)
Children (7-12)
Teenagers (13-18)
Adults (19-34)
Adults (35-50)
Adults (51-64)
Seniors (65+)
We did experience some quibbling about the exact age ranges and whether you
could tell if someone was 34 or 35, but we regard these figures only as
estimates and have turned out to be much more useful than our former
methods. Admission to the Homestead Museum is free, so it didn't affect our
pricing structure but if we did charge admission, we would have aligned them
to simplify management (e.g., one adult price for ages 19-64 but three
visitor attendance groups of 19-34, 35-50, and 51-64).
Max A. van Balgooy
Director of Interpretation and Education
National Trust for Historic Preservation
-----Original Message-----
From: Sarah Landreth [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, January 28, 2003 4:27 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Standards for Admission Categories?
Are there approved museum standards governing the definition of age-based
admission price categories? IE, is there an official definition of what
age range constitutes an "Adult," a "Senior," a "Student" and a "Child"?
Or should every museum define those categories for itself?
Thanks in advance for your help.
Best,
Sarah Landreth
Historic House Trust of New York City
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