Hi Meghan
Your exit surveys can gather information in four areas:
1. Who are your visitors
2. What motivated them to visit
3. What was their experience
4. What impact did you have.
I suggest you start with # 1 and # 3.
- Determine your sampling strategy. For example, we take 200 surveys each
season, splitting our sample between weekends and weekdays per that season's
expected attendance (winter it's 70% weekends 30% weekdays, summer it's
50-50)
- We ask zip code, group composition (gender, ages of adults and children),
age, education level, ethnic background and household income of respondent)
- About once a year we give people a map on exiting, ask them when they
entered, and ask them to trace their route through the building. We find
out what gets visited most and how much time they are spending in the
building.
- We ask either basic questions on customer service (our categories are
quality of exhibits, staff encounters, food service, value for ticket price,
programs, stores, crowding), or more detailed questions (for example for
food service we may ask quality of food, staff in that area, value, as well
as overall for food service).
- We ask for an overall rating for their experience.
# 2 and # 4 are more complicated and while we ask a few questions about this
we tend to rely on more specific studies to look at motivations and impacts.
You might want to pick up a book This is a good one available at AAM's
bookstore
Practical Evaluation Guide
Tools for Museums & Other Informal Educational Settings
Judy Diamond
AltaMira Press / American Association for State & Local History
Visitor evaluations provide clues to the effectiveness of exhibits and
programs, and provide insights into how people learn in informal educational
settings. This title presents the basic principles and techniques needed to
design, implement, and present an evaluation project. It is a clearly and
simply written guide with sample questionnaires that should prove an
invaluable resource for competent, reliable evaluations in informal
educational settings of any kind.
paper 192 pages pub date 1999
ISBN: 0-7619-8940-4
$24.00 (non member cost)
$22.00 (member cost)
Linda Wilson
Manager, Audience Research and Evaluation
John G. Shedd Aquarium
1200 S. Lake Shore Drive
Chicago, IL 60605
PH (312) 692 3261 FAX (312) 939 8677 [log in to unmask]
-----Original Message-----
From: Meghan Turner [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, June 03, 2003 5:26 PM
Subject: Visitor Surveys
Does anyone do a visitor survey upon entrance/exit of your museum? We are
trying to start an organized process of collecting visitor feedback and
demographics, and any sample surveys or advice on approaching the task
would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
Meghan Turner
USS Hornet Museum
Alameda, California
www.uss-hornet.org
ph: 510.521.8448
fax: 510.521.8327
"We blow other museums away... or at least we could."
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