WZAM3 Method and Instrumentation

This paper describes the methodology and the development of the instruments for collecting and analyzing data to better understand 1) what people bring with them to their visit, 2) what people do during a visit, and 3) what people take away from a visit. Elements of what they bring intersect with Knology’s work, and what they do and what they take away intersect with Oregon State University’s work on WZAM3.

COSI’s Center for Research and Evaluation (CRE) led a study was conducted in four phases with three study components. These phases serve to organize the remainder of this report::

Phase 1: Preliminary work including an Exploratory Study and a literature review that led to 44 possible study components.

Phase 2: Instrumentation involving the construction and testing of 12 scales using 11 existing scales' questions, advisors suggesting dropping 5 questions and resulting in 16 common questions for comparison.

Phase 3: The study including data collection at 25 zoos and aquariums and over 8000 responses, and data analysis.

Phase 4: Digging deeper, resulting in follow-up interviews to better understand some of the findings from the survey work.

This white paper includes all scale metrics from construction, code books for intervierws, and the final instrument and interview schedules used.