Journey to Planet Earth: The State of the Ocean’s Animals Summative Evaluation

Goodman Research Group, Inc. (GRG) conducted summative evaluation of the Journey to Planet Earth: The State of the Ocean's Animals project. GRG has served as external evaluator for Journey to Planet Earth since 1999. Journey to Planet Earth is a PBS series that explores the fragile relationship between people and the world they inhabit. The most recent evaluation included two components: 1) a viewer study of the Ocean's Animals episode in the series (hosted and narrated by Matt Damon), and 2) an evaluation of the outreach initiative that complemented the series. The broad goal of the evaluation was to assess the overall influence of the television program and the outreach initiative on TV viewers, on the collaborating partners (the 10 science centers and their collaborators), and on the intended audiences (families, students, the general public). The evaluation explored the activities that were developed, described the ways in which those activities related to the Journey series, assessed the variation from site to site, and assessed the extent to which the activities might be replicable for future outreach initiatives. The appendix of this report includes the surveys and interview protocol used in the study.