By going to this link. Enrollment takes less than five minutes.

No. In 2025, we anticipate having a Canadian version of the survey, with demographic questions adapted as needed. Museums in other countries are welcome to participate, and your respondents will see a statement in the survey about United States terminology.

We do not share raw data (which includes email addresses and IP addresses) with anyone. Period. Not even the museum for whom that respondent answered a survey. Wilkening Consulting’s statement on data privacy can be found here.

The standard fee is $1,250 for museums that send their surveys out to their contact lists no later than March 8, 2025. After that date, the participation fee increases to $3,250. If you request extra services, you will be asked to agree to an additional fee. 

Invoices will be sent from the American Alliance of Museums at the end of March. If you need to pay at an earlier time, just let us know.

One of our primary goals is to create a large data set of frequent museum-goers. Museums that participate on or before March 8 contribute to that data set. Museums that participate later do not, and thus pay a higher participation fee.

The American Alliance of Museums will send an invoice to the email address of the museum staff person coordinating the survey. You can pay by check or credit card.

We identify research themes from the trends and shifts critically impacting the museum field as well as feedback from previous year participants whose questions and thoughts also identify critical issues.

We ask age, gender, parental status and age of minor children, educational attainment, field of work, race and ethnicity, and political affiliation.

Political values deeply influence how different audiences respond to content. Given the polarized nature of our society, understanding these influences is imperative to museum professionals.

Yes, participating museums may add a maximum of three additional questions to their survey at an additional fee of $350 per question. If you include custom questions, the inclusion questions will be removed from your survey in order to keep the survey length manageable for respondents. Open-ended questions are counted as two questions. 

We provide you with a PDF of dozens of sample custom questions. It can be as easy as picking out the two you think are most relevant to your museum. You are also welcome to edit any of these custom questions. Simply send us your edits and we’ll make those changes. There are a few questions that we encourage using as is so that we can develop national comparisons or because we have existing national comparisons from previous years. You’ll know which ones they are and can then decide if you want to edit or use as is. You can also write your own custom questions. We want the custom questions to be the best ones for you. If you have a new question, let us know and we’ll write it for your approval.

Anyone you have permission to contact! This should absolutely include your email contact list, but also social media and any other ways you contact those who are interested in hearing from you.

It is imperative to send your survey in a standalone email. Survey requests buried in e-newsletters get too few responses to be useful. A standalone email results in a far larger sample size (and we want you to have stable data!).

Most museums average about a 3% response rate (as a percentage of your email list). Thus, if you have an email list of 10,000, we would expect about 300 responses. We do require a minimum of 100 responses to generate a report. You will have access to an online dashboard and can watch your results come in and see if you are getting the response rate you are aiming for. If your responses are coming in slowly, Wilkening Consulting will be in touch to suggest a reminder email.

We sort data based on museum type and geography so we can compare your results to your peers. For example, if you are a science center, we’ll compare your results to other science centers. Or we may compare you to other museums in your city or state. We require at least 5 museums in a specific discipline or geographic area to run that data cut.

At a minimum, we run data cuts for: art museums; history museums; historic sites; natural history museums; children’s museums; science centers; and botanic garden and arboreta. As long as 5 or more museums participate, we’ll also run data cuts for zoos and aquaria as well as finer data cuts for things like college/university art museums or military museums (to list just two examples). In 2024 we ran data cuts on 33 different kinds of museums. As we receive more enrollees, we will update the data cuts section of this website so you can see what data cuts will be available in 2025.

Yes, as long as there are 5 or more museums in that specific geographic area. In 2024 we ran data cuts for 21 different cities or states. As we receive more enrollees, we will update the data cuts section of this website so you can see what data cuts will be available in 2025.

Absolutely! As long as there are 5 museums participating, we will be happy to run that data cut.

You can opt in to broader population sampling for your city (if in a large enough metro area) or state. There is a minimum fee of $2,000 for a sample of 250; the sampling fee increases for larger samples. This comparison survey will mirror the national broader population comparison survey, but you can include your custom questions in it.

The report spreadsheet provides the overall results from all respondents, with your results for comparison purposes. Different tabs also provide you with any relevant peer group data cuts, results for custom questions, and any written-in comments from your respondents. If you have participated in an Annual Survey in the past, you also receive your historical data to compare your benchmark and demographic questions. If you would like to see a sample custom spreadsheet report, you can contact Wilkening Consulting.

Yes! If you are a Tier 3 museum member of AAM, you will receive a private phone call with Wilkening Consulting to discuss your results. If you are not a Tier 3 member, you will be invited to participate in office hours with Wilkening Consulting. All participants will also have access to a small collection of videos that provide context.

They will cover how to use your reports as well as a contextual overview of demographic patterns, benchmark questions, and the main lines of inquiry for the year.

For participants that are not AAM Tier 3 museum members, we invite you to participate in office hours with Wilkening Consulting. These are two-hour sessions with other participants that you can drop in on and ask questions about your results or larger patterns that are in the data.

If you are an AAM Tier 3 museum member, this is one of your member benefits. If not, you can request a private call for an additional $250 fee.

Wilkening Consulting will walk you through your results, question-by-question, and explore what your results mean to you. It will be assumed that you have already viewed the short contextual videos shared with all participants so that we can focus on your specific results and interpretation.

Once public enrollment has started, we will begin updating the list of current participants on the data cuts section of this website.

The Annual Survey of Museum-Goers has grown exponentially over the past two years. At this time, we will be placing an initial limit of 350 participating museums for the 2025 survey. Once this limit is reached, we will begin a waitlist. In order of registration, we will contact those on the waitlist if additional capacity allows.

Museums with operating budgets of $400,000 or less will receive a 20% discount ($250 off) if they launch their survey by March 8, 2025. You may be asked to provide evidence of your budget size.