We do very broad-based visitor surveys for our master planning projects. We are looking for responses to the museum as a whole, rather than to a particular exhibit or experience, so that shapes what we ask. Here are a few thoughts.
Rather than surveying individual visitors, we ask one member of each group to fill out the survey for the group. We find information about the group size and demographics is often the most interesting response. We were surprised to find that for one museum, more than 40% of the groups visiting consisted of three generations, children, parents, and grandparents.
We find it useful to ask about which parts of the museum visitors found most interesting or engaging. Again, answers to this are often surprising.
We also use a lot of open ended questions and then code the answers based on responses. Why did you visit today? Is a great open ended question. So are: What surprised you? And What disappointed you?
We keep our surveys to under one page. That is plenty of data to try to manage without an on-staff analyst.
We find that we get interesting and useful results with relatively small sample sizes. 50 surveys will usually indicate a trend for a single variable. 100 will confirm it. (If you want to see the intersection of two variables, you'll need more data).
You can get a lot more information from the Visitor Studies Association.
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Guy Hermann
Museum Insights
http://www.museuminsights.co
Original Message:
Sent: 02-16-2016 04:50 PM
From: Therese Palazzari
Subject: Visitor surveys
The Milwaukee Art Museum is in the process of revising its basic, day-in and day-out visitor survey. We want it to be relatively short and concise--asking only things we will use in some way. Can anyone please share your surveys, suggestions, or wisdom with us? This would be very much appreciated. Therese Palazzari
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