In this forward, Stephen Bitgood, editor of "Visitor Behavior," summarizes the issue dedicated to the pioneering work of Edward Robinson and Arthur Melton as well as the efforts by current researchers. Bitgood also presents a list of pioneering articles on the topic of visitor behavior.
This article features eight abstracts from the First Annual Visitor Studies Conference. Institutions represented in these abstracts include the Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village, Science Learning, Inc., Hood Associates, Jacksonville State University, Smithsonian Institution, and University of Florida.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
G. Donald AdamsJohn H FalkMarilyn G. HoodDonald PattersonStephen BitgoodD.D. HilkeJohn Scott FosterJohn J. Koran, Jr.Mary Lou KoranSteven StartAnn BlackwoodHarriet Landers
resourceresearchProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
In this report, Minda Borun summarizes the activities of the business meeting of the Education Committee, which took place at the 1988 Annual Meeting of the American Association of Museums in Pittsburgh.
This is a brief summary of Marilyn Hood's works on audience research, a useful tool for professionals interested in conducting research and evaluation.
This is a bibliography for a glossary of key terms related to the field of visitor studies and evaluation. The glossary can be found on page 8 of the same resource.
In this article, Jacksonville State University's Stephen Bitgood presents a summary of issues related to evaluation discussed in visitor studies literature. These issues include research vs. evaluation, formative vs. summative evaluation, goal-free vs. goal-referenced evaluation, and developmental vs. post-design evaluation.
In this article, Jacksonville State University's Stephen Bitgood Ph.D. presents an overview of the methodology used in visitor studies research. Bitgood identifies reliability and validity as the two most important standards, defines several types of visitor research (experimental, correlational, descriptive/observational), and describes two methods of measuring visitor behavior (direct observation and self-reporting).
In this article, Donna M. McElroy, education curator at the Sangre de Cristo Arts Center (Pueblo, Colorado), discusses evaluation strategies and key findings used to create and improve a self-guide "birds-eye view" map to the Asian Collection at the Denver Art Museum.
In this article, Colorado State University researcher Jerome Dagostino presents a review of three noteworthy museum studies to highlight the variety of different survey techniques used to evaluate art museums.