Models of Museum Visiting

This question from Ido Beja, Haifa University (via Facebook!): My name is Ido, I'm a student from Haifa University, and I'm doing some research about visitors in museums with hope to build a system for groups of visitors in museums based on group modeling. I saw the abstract of your article "Developing a model of museum visiting" - can you please sent me hard copy of the article?

Hi Ido, I did indeed write a paper on this topic in 2001, presenting it at a Museums Australia conference in Canberra. Basically the study involved a series of exit surveys conducted from November 1999 to January 2001 with visitors to the Australian Museum, Sydney. Questions were designed to see what factors identified from the literature influenced reasons given for visiting museums and galleries generally, and the Australian Museum in particular. 413 visitors were asked to rate eleven indicators on a 5-point Likert-scale, with 1 being low and 5 high. From both looking at the data and a literature review I developed a model of museum visiting which included the following five highest rating factors (in order):

• experiencing something new
  
• entertainment
  
• learning
  
• the interests of children/family
  
• doing something worthwhile in leisure
  

There was not much discrimination between factors based on the relatively small variation between standard deviations (from 1.04 to 1.51), which suggested to me that these are probably the main drivers for visitors to museums.

The model I proposed is below. This is further explained in the paper you asked about, which I have posted on my Audience Research wiki (go down the page to find it).

I haven't re-looked at this for awhile now so be interested in any feedback.

 

“Classifying” physical and online visitors and reflections on ‘flow’

Gave a paper at Museums and the Web 2008 looking at some of the ways on-line users have been classified. Again, when at the Museum of the Confederacy we were talking about on-line users and I got to thinking about some of the ways we have "classified" physical visitors and could they be applied to the on-line user as well? I was reminded of something that George McDonald (I think it was) said some time ago about visitors being streakers, strollers and students, which has many resonances with both physical and on-line audiences. George Hein, in his 1998 book Learning in Museums, reported on the following ways that visitors had been grouped (which is useful to re-visit at this time):

Higgins (1884)

• Students
  
• Observers
  
• Loungers
  
• Emigrants
  

  Wolf & Tymitz (1978)
  

• The commuter – use the hall to get from one entry point to the exit
  
• The nomad – casual visitor
  
• The cafeteria type – interested visitor who treats museum like a cafeteria as they search for objects or exhibitions of interest
  
• The VIP – very interested person
  

  Falk (1982)
  

• Serious shoppers – come with a clear predetermined notion of what want to see
  
• Window shoppers – come "to do" the museum
  
• Impulse shoppers – discover one or more exhibits that are interesting and become more engaged than first planned
  

  Veron & Lavasseur (1989)
  

• Ants – move methodically from object to object
  
• Butterflies – move back & forth, alight on some displays
  
• Grasshoppers – chose specific objects and hop from one to the other
  
• Fish – glide in and out of exhibitions with few stops
  

Mia Ridge in recent a blog post suggests we could help visitors lose themselves more so than we do now. While she was talking about on-line audiences, the principle is totally the same for physical visitors. I did find in my doctoral study, however, that we are all different (no surprise there!) and that some love getting lost while others want to get in and then out quickly with what they need and that these preferences are fluid. It's all related to what Csikszentmihihalyi and Hermanson suggested that if a museum visitor was both interested and engaged in an exhibition they would be ready to experience an intrinsically rewarding, optimal experience, which they called flow '... a state of mind that is spontaneous, almost automatic, like the flow of a strong current. ... In the 'flow' state, a person is unaware of fatigue and the passing of time - hours pass by in what seems like minutes. This depth of involvement is enjoyable and intrinsically rewarding.' (1995).

Reflecting on all this I still think the framework of streakers, strollers and students is something worth further thought for both the physical and online experience, coupled with an understanding of the power of the 'flow'...

Locals visiting museums

After my excellent lunch the other day with Rob and Gillian, I got inspired (or was that instructed!) by Rob to re-visit his 2005 paper The "Museum Constant": One-third plus or minus a bit (Visitor Studies Today!, 8/2, pp1, 4-7). Rob reports on an analysis of museum visiting data collected over a 13 year period with Australians asking about their leisure activities, demographic profile and personality/self-description items. Generally it was found that around 35% of the Sydney population visit museums, with the interest in museums more noticeable in those who agreed with the statement "I am interested in abstract ideas", then followed by education level.

Four things struck me from that as we struggle here with thinking about our general exhibitions and program offer:

1. There is a limit to the audience for museums (knew that but good reinforcement)
   
2. The limit '... appears to be driven by people's preferences for conceptual cognitive activity' (p.7)
   
3. Although education is a strong predictor it acts as an enabler in people participating in the museum experience
   
4. 'It may be that museums in large population centres cannot hope to reach all the people in their catchment, but perhaps over time, they can reach about two-thirds of them' (p.7)
   

In my recent survey of what Australians do online, I found that while those who visit museums undertake the same kinds of online activities (such as read blogs, comment on sites, use RSS feeds, etc), they were more likely to use a wiki; listen to a podcast; tag a web page; comment on a blog; post a rating/review; participate in a discussion board/forum; read a blog.

I'm wondering in future whether these kinds of stats will be affected by the online world and the new kinds of relationships museums will have with their audiences that visit them both virtually and physically? I'm becoming (surprisingly) more interested in how we then develop closer relationships in these aspects as we our rebuild our website and deeply think about our physical offer. To me, the conceptual aspects that Rob talks about are ripe for the picking in those who will interact with us online too.

Maybe time for some targeted research in this area??