Open Forum

Our museum census counts people visits. We don't count unique individuals (although if needed we can estimate that data). If a child comes for two different school trips, we count him twice. If he comes again with his family, we count him a third time.

We are clear that our numbers represent individual visits, not unique individuals, so we are not trying to be deceptive.

Good luck!

Kelly

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Kelly Armor
Education Director
Erie Art Museum
Erie PA
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When gathering data - and interpreting data - you just need to be clear about what you are collecting and asking.  You are gathering important data about how many participants were served by a particular education program. It seems like you are also able to gather additional data about individuals like "is this a repeat visit to the museum?" and "have you attended this program before?" Gathering that kind of data (along with attendance numbers) can really deepen your understanding of how your audience uses your museum because it gets into the more qualitative "why do you come?" "why is the institution important?" "how does this program make an impact?" and "is the museum fulfilling its educational mission?" Just be sure to accurately label the numbers you have collected (for example you had 60 program participants and 30 individual visitors - both numbers are accurate but tell a different story about the museum's audience).

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Edith Gonzalez Salva PhD
Executive Director
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Hi Edith,

Great discussion. In a few case studies of data analysis in museums, I found a common argument about whether to look at total attendance data or unique attendance data. Some would argue that unique attendance is more meaningful because of its accurate depiction of demographic impact, while some argue that total attendance is the ultimate quantification of impact. Both arguments have their own rationale. 

My question, though, is that in general- which view yield more practical meaning in terms of calling for action on your team? When developing a program, which measure do you usually put on your scorecard and why? 

 Thanks for your insights.

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Yu-De Lee
Co-founder of Viryaa Studio
Ann Arbor MI
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If I had the capability to track individuals, I would prefer that measure because it can be used to answer questions inside and outside your organization. Internally, it can guide you in program development. For example if you see that you are offering a Saturday "intro art" program for 30 kids and your data tells you that the same 15 kids keep coming back, I would do a quick survey of those 15 (and their parents) to find out if they wanted a "level 2" class, a series, or a week-long camp. Repeat individual visitors to a program or exhibit is something to be proud of because it shows a depth to the experience you can come back multiple times and still learn something new. Tracking overall attendance allows an institution to look at its place in the community - what are its peak times, days, weeks months -and why? this helps in planning calendars that are integrated into the rhythm of the community. Overall numbers are often required for grant proposals and annual reports to stakeholders as well. 

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Edith Gonzalez Salva PhD
Executive Director
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Good discussion on counting museums engagements, but I recommend adopting existing standardized definitions. The following definitions are based on ASTC and AAM definitions and other assumptions in my forthcoming book Measuring Impact and Performance: Theory and practice:

• Annual museum engagements include sub-totals for visitors and program participants.
• The most common and counted engagement is a museum site visit. A visit is one individual who comes on-site intending to visit the museum’s galleries and possibly its other visitor venues. Each person-visit is counted as one museum engagement or site visit, even if the visit involves more than one activity or venue. For instance, an admissions ticket that combines two museum venues (e.g., galleries + garden tour) during a single visit is counted as one site visit but two venue visits.
• People also come to museums to participate in programs. A museum can hold its programs on-site, off-site, and virtually – the last two are also called outreach. Each program participation is counted as one per person-trip. If a ceramics workshop has six sessions and a program participant attends all of them that counts as six museum engagements.
• On-site attendance includes both visitors and program participants counted by person-trips. The motivation to make the trip is the distinction -- did they come for a visit or a program?—and usually shows up in the museum's transaction records -- did they buy an admission ticket or pay for a program or get a pass to attend a meeting? Many exhibit gallery admissions get programs included for free, some school groups add fee-based programs to their base admission, and some patrons buy combo tickets. These multiple venue visits do not increase on-site attendance as they do not increase the number of person-trips.

I hope this helps -- please let me know if the definitions could be improved.

Cheers,  John

John Jacobsen

• CEO
  White Oak
  Marblehead MA
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  Original Message
  Original Message:
  Sent: 08-10-2015 10:57 PM
  From: Yu-De Lee
  Subject: Double counting program participants
  
  

Hi Edith,

Great discussion. In a few case studies of data analysis in museums, I found a common argument about whether to look at total attendance data or unique attendance data. Some would argue that unique attendance is more meaningful because of its accurate depiction of demographic impact, while some argue that total attendance is the ultimate quantification of impact. Both arguments have their own rationale. 

My question, though, is that in general- which view yield more practical meaning in terms of calling for action on your team? When developing a program, which measure do you usually put on your scorecard and why? 

 Thanks for your insights.

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Yu-De Lee
Co-founder of Viryaa Studio
Ann Arbor MI
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Most certainly we'll count a class twice if they come on different days.  A few years ago, we implemented a way to record, for each day, the difference between a simple "bodies-through-the-door" count and a "contact" count.  If a group comes to the KVM to see a planetarium show, attend a workshop and visit an exhibit, they get counted both ways -- once for the "bodies-through-the-door," and once for each of the programs/exhibits they came to see.  We don't include the contact numbers in our annual tally of visitors, but it does give us information about the behavior of groups and individuals once they enter our building.

Since the vast majority of our visitors are repeat, and because we don't charge admission, we wouldn't have a way to accurately determine the real number of unique visitors.  So, again, we do count in our annual attendance reports, the same people each day they come to visit the museum.

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Elspeth Inglis
Assistant Director for Educational Services
Kalamazoo Valley Museum
Kalamazoo MI
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Thanks to everyone for the comments so far.  I appreciate the suggestion to think about usage of the data in determining whether or not to track visits/participants vs. unique visits/participants.  For us, at the moment we are looking at big picture reporting, and so we will track visits/participants.  That said, we will be looking for ways to eventually start examining who is coming to our parks on a repeated basis and why.

Best wishes,

Brian

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Brian Johnson, Ph.D.
Director of Educational Research and Program Development
Wildlife Conservation Society
Bronx NY
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I've enjoyed this discussion. We are doing some internal reviews of how we track/count visitors (site visits only). We have tried to find a formula to forecast admissions ($/visitor) and use it to assess ROI when considering future visitor programs, ad buys etc.

Here's what we came up with: total # people/total$ = ave. $/visitor. That takes into consideration discounts, adult/senior/child/military rates, passes etc. 

Appreciate any feedback on this approach.
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Wendy Lull
President
Seacoast Science Center
Rye NH
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Hello Wendy,

When we looked into museum performance in terms of revenue and attendance, ave. $/visitor is primary a revenue measure. If we think about all the visitors in a staged funnel, some of your programs bringing a great number of visitation (or you can call it initial visitor acquisition) might not have immediate positive impact on ave. $/visitor. But as long as you can confirm the initial visitor acquisition being successful, and know how you can convert these newly acquired visitors to be longer-term ones, and how you can increase per capita spending with other programs on these people at later stages, low or even negative ROI at these programs might be acceptable.  

Furthermore, except admission ave. $/visitor, earned income from your shop, food services, and parking, should also be part of the analysis in order to model various visitor behaviors in your institution. For example, in a case we did we found family visitors have pretty low ave. $/visitor of admission, but they have higher ave. $/visitor spending on food and shop versus total population. So the institution decided to focus on growing ave. $/visitor of food service instead of admission. What we did was to devise a targeted promotion for families on regular coffee (high margin, does not hurt food service profit much if volume increases a lot) to drive visitor traffic to food services. When families buy coffee at promotional prices, revenue on other food items increased together, and is much more than making up the difference of lower ave. $/visitor. 

A lot of these actions depend on your visitor portfolio, your programs, and other external factors, like weather, seasons, external events, making the forecast challenging. But your approach is certainly a great way to start with.

Let me know if you would like to discuss it in detail.
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Yu-De Lee
Co-founder, Viryaa Studio
Ann Arbor MI
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You're quite right: we need to factor in store sales, membership conversion too!

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Wendy Lull
President
Seacoast Science Center
Rye NH
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We also count visits, not unique visitors. Ultimately I want to know how many are taking advantage of the various services that we offer. It helps us to know how many shop in the store, how many use the library or how many tour our collections. Then we compare that data year to year as one component of evaluating a particular areas performance.

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Patricia Giordano
Marketing Director
Memorial Art Gallery of Rochester
Rochester NY
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We follow the approach suggested above by John Jacobson.  While we did not do it based on the standards, it evolved as the best practice to organize, report and use the data on visitation and program participation.   We fine tune reports for program and budget impact analysis.  For example, we track both unique individual and site visit engagement for education programs whenever possible.  We have better systems to track individuals with program registrations than with general admission. 

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Robert Gutowski
Director of Public Programs
Morris Arboretum of the University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia PA
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