Requesting Feedback: Brief Survey for MBA Project

[stx]

Hello All,
I am working on a project for my MBA on organizational commitment and job performance amongst professional historians. If you currently work or have formerly worked in the history field, I would appreciate your feedback on this brief survey:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/6TZMGK7

It is only ten questions and should take 2-3 minutes of your time.

Thanks!

Tim Koenig

[NMVolunteer]

Re: Requesting Feedback: Brief Survey for MBA Project

Slight quibble, with some of the questions I would provide an acknowledgement of its existence as a concept as an answer, but not necessarily an "I agree" or "I disagree". Some things are hard to summarize as simple yes or no.

EDIT:
For example, museums use "gimmicks" to attract visitors. That happens with all museums, because museums have to have a gimmick to attract visitors. People driving down the road on a daytrip or vacation will stop in for any museum if they know it is along their path, is open, and is likely to have a clean restroom. Attracting visitors to come to the town specifically to see that museum is what requires a gimmick. Some of the gimmicks I can think about in this state are "Goddard's rocket workshop", "Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders", "oldest still operating rolling mill", "nuclear bombs and jet planes", "largest fort in the West", "oldest still standing and intact fort", "somewhat intact thousand-year-old pueblo", "history of the town where Black Jack Ketchum lost his head", "concentration camp for thousands of Navajo", "where Billy the Kid became an outlaw", "intact cliff dwellings that you can actually climb into and enter", "paintings of flowers that look like something else but totally are not something else", "one of two major battlefields in the state (even though battlefield itself is on private land and you can't see it)" etc etc. A local history museum on its own will not convince people to drive three or four hours, since the local history museum will have little meaning to people not from that particular town. The focus on local history will convince locals to come back, especially if they know photographs or personal property of their ancestors are on display. A local history museum without a gimmick is just an "I am driving through anyway, so I might as well stop in and check it out" sort of museum. It's something that I have been struggling with my museum, because we do not have a gimmick. The potential gimmicks I can think of are already claimed by other museums in the southwest.

For example, a museum dedicated to Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders, but also local history, could really play up the Teddy Roosevelt angle in marketing and advertising to gain visitors. That is not "selling out" at all. If that museum used that marketing to convince visitors to check out a new temporary exhibit or a recently renovated permanent exhibit, that still would not be "selling out". If the museum used that marketing to convince visitors to check out the museum, but instead of a Teddy Roosevelt wing, they instead find an in-depth interpretive experience of race relations between the Anglo, Hispano, and Native American soldiers in the Rough Riders, that would still not be "selling out". Maybe "bait and switch", but not "selling out". I can't think of a scenario where a museum could use marketing gimmicks to "sell out"; I am not even sure how a museum could "sell out" in the first place (outside of self-censoring to appease donors), since museums usually have multiple galleries and can have more than one topic or narrative at once.

[stx]

Re: Requesting Feedback: Brief Survey for MBA Project

Michael,
Thank you for your feedback. I 100% agree that most of my questions have a more nuanced answer/opinion than what I made available. There is an entire science devoted to the creation of surveys (ensuring the questions aren't biased, getting the right audience, etc) that I am not educated on. To your point about gimmicks, I was thinking more about things like using Fortnight, TikTok, or things of that nature to draw in visitors because a museum/site knows it's trendy, even if it devalues the history a little. That' might not be a great example, but nothing else specific comes to mind right now.

Tim Koenig

[NMVolunteer]

Re: Requesting Feedback: Brief Survey for MBA Project

There's nothing about social media that devalues a museum's subject matter. Social media is a great way to bring visitors to a museum, and is a great form of outreach when museums are closed. Social media is especially important now because museums are struggling due to the pandemic. Over in England, they have had "oddest object found in the collection" competitions on Twitter. Taking advantage of popular trends to get visitors in the doors is just how museums function and advertise.