There are so many ways to approach doing a visitor study and choosing the right method – or methods – can feel daunting. All visitor studies should have a research question, to focus the study. But, you can’t go up to visitors and ask them your research question directly.
Well, technically you can, but it likely won’t yield accurate results.
Your question may include terms most visitors are unfamiliar with (like interpretation), require detailed information on a visitor’s experience that would detract from their actual visit (like tracking their time spent in different galleries), or be something they don’t have enough information to answer (like, assessing if the main messages in the tours onsite align with the institution’s mission).
This means, you need to translate your research question into one or more methods. You then use these methods to collect data from visitors which will later be analysed to answer your research question.
To translate your research question into the right method(s) you need to know:
- The question itself
- The resources you have to do the visitor study
- Who will be reading the results of your visitor study
By considering these three things, you are on your way to picking effective and feasible methods for your visitor study.
Example
Here is a – very simplified – example of how this works.
Imagine you work at a museum that focuses on the history of pets and they have just opened a special exhibit on the history of dog toothpaste (it’s a real thing). The museum wants to answer this question: What is the most successful interpretive experience in this exhibit?
Let’s go through the three things to consider when choosing the methods to answer this question.
- The question itself: “What is the most successful interpretive experience in this exhibit?”
Dissect the question. Define “interpretive experience” and think of all the different ways you could measure “success.”
Is it time spent at the interpretive experience? Is it self-reported satisfaction in a post-visit survey? Consider things like how important it is that you tie responses back to an individual visitor. Brainstorm with your team to think of all the different approaches you could take.
Consider what is not part of the question. For example, do you need to know the age of visitors? Maybe, but maybe not. Matching your methods to the scope of your question will save you time while you are collecting data and during the analysis stage.
- The resources you have to do the visitor study
Imagine this museum on the history of pets has chosen two methods to answer their research question:
- Exit Surveys
- Timing and Tracking
But, they have limited financial and human resources to do this visitor study. This museum would have a few choices to address this limitation:
- Simplify the methods chosen. This could mean asking fewer and more qualitative questions on the survey or tracking how many visitors stop at an interpretive experience – but not how long they stay.
- Pick only one method. There are pros and cons to this approach because your data will be less robust if you are limited to a single method. However, any data is better than no data and if the choice is between doing a visitor study with one method versus not doing a visitor study at all, the best choice is to do the single-method study.
- Get creative. Can you train volunteers to help with the visitor study? Any local students who need experience collecting data? Check your funding opportunities and if possible, expand your timeline so you have the time to build more capacity to do your visitor study.
Don’t forget to consider how many resources will be needed in the data analysis stage. For example, doing exit interviews with visitors might seem like a fast method at first, but transcribing and coding those interviews will take a long time. When picking methods, think of the resources you will need to complete the entire visitor study.
- Who will be reading the results of your visitor study
A visitor study should ultimately be a useful document that helps guide institutions to better connect with their visitors. Who is going to be reading about the findings? What will they be doing with this information?
Returning to the imaginary museum on pet history, with the special exhibit on dog toothpaste, let’s imagine they are doing this visitor study to apply for future funding to improve interpretive experiences in other exhibits.
This means the method(s) used should be easy for potential funders to understand and be something the museum could replicate on any future exhibits that get funded. They may also want to gather qualitative data, like quotes from visitors to make their application for funding more compelling.
Conclusion
There are a lot of methods that can be used in visitor studies but if you keep focused on the question, understand your resources and the future readers of your visitor study report, you will find the best methods.
TM Visitor Studies 