Within the necessary functions of today’s museum is included research, not just of the objects in the museum’s possession, but also of the people visiting and not visiting the museum, the “audience”. This type of study helps to fulfill the needs of this audience and allows the museum to reach its fullest educational potential.
The study of visitors involves a number of different disciplines, and has a long history, following the progression not only of museums, but also of these other disciplines. Early studies followed the behaviorist model from psychology and focused on studying only the behavior of visitors within the museum space. Within this model, based on somewhat elitist attitudes, was the idea of the transfer of knowledge from the expert to the commoner. Many of these studies, however, merely focused on the “attracting” or “holding” power of exhibits, and not on the sociological reasons behind this attraction. Also, these studies were done in order to measure the success of the exhibit and used preconceived ideas of what should be attained by visiting the museum.
Some research included questioning the visitors after their visit, and by the 1960’s, visitor surveys were very prominent among museums. Although possibly helpful from a business standpoint, these observations and surveys only provide basic demographic information on visitors. It cannot measure the experience of the visitor, or why people do not visit the museum.
In the 1980’s, some surveys were revised to be more efficient. Other surveys were expanded to include people not visiting museums. Also, a number of museums began participating in market research with focus groups including both visitors and non-visitors. These actions were able to gather more social data on people’s ideas about museums from a larger demographic.
Out of these earlier studies, grew a large research program based out of the Natural History Museum in
In today’s research on visitors, many of the methods used are again borrowed from psychology. However, changes in the field of psychology, from a focus on behavior to interpretation and ethnography, have influenced the methods and conclusions of more recent research. These studies now take into account the reasons for a person’s visit, and varying levels of willingness to learn. Instead of surveying visitors after their museum experience, visitors are now studied before, during and after their visit to measure changing attitudes and a fuller experience. With this broadening of factors, has also come an extended reach for these studies. Early visitor studies mainly took place in science museums, however, visitor studies are now employed in almost all types of museums.
Although ethnographic study of visitors is the ideal method of research, the costliness and time-consuming nature of these more thorough methods can be prohibitive to many museums. It is also noted that the results do not lead directly to museum policy, although I would argue that when analyzed properly, much like market research, ideal policies can be realized from these results. Therefore, many museums still focus on the demographic studies to measure “success” of exhibitions and the museum itself. What is needed is an integration of the demographic study with ethnographic data, analyzed in a way that can be useful to the museum in better catering to the fullest available audience.
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