Summative Evaluation of Journey into Amazing Caves with an Adult Audience

With support from the National Science Foundation, MacGillivray Freeman Films has produced an IMAX® film titled, Journey into Amazing Caves. The 40-minute film follows two women cavers on an expedition as they explore limestone caverns of the Grand Can-yon, underwater caves of the Yucatan and ice caves of Greenland. Multimedia Research implemented a summative evaluation focused on the following major outcomes: To what extent and in what ways did the film appeal to viewers? To what extent did the film achieve its intended viewing goals? What did viewers perceive that they learned from the film? What new information did viewers learn about scientists? What relationship did the film have with the museum cave exhibit? Did viewing the film influence the audience beyond the museum visit? A quasi-experimental separate-sample pretest/posttest design was used to evaluate the film in its natural theater setting. Over a period of four days at the Cincinnati Museum Center Theater, researchers asked viewers stratified by gender and aged 16 and older to complete previewing or postviewing questionnaires. A sample was surveyed prior to viewing the film and a different sample was surveyed after viewing. A small subset of the post-viewing sample was interviewed by telephone one week after seeing the film. Journey into Amazing Caves was interesting to 95% of the audience; made a significant impact on their knowledge of cave life, cave formation, cave exploration and viewers' understanding of scientists; and continued to influence 40% of the audience after their museum visit. There appeared to be minimal connection made by audience members between the film and the cave exhibits within the museum, which were not marketed as part of the film.