Attitude Change and Time as Measures of Effective Exhibits
Abstract
This dissertation consists of three journal articles that examined the effectiveness of using attitudinal change and time as measures of exhibit effectiveness. The introduction discusses using Lev Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development (ZPD) and Jean Piaget’s stages of cognitive development as frameworks for organizing exhibit content (DeVries, 2000). The first article presents a study that measured exhibit visitors' reported attitudes as measured by an early iteration of the attitudinal learning inventory (ALI) (Watson et al., 2018). The study, which was conducted at the Indiana State Fair and measured visitors’ self-reported attitude changes after visiting an exhibit about hellbender salamanders, found that 73% of survey respondents claimed they would change their behavior and 70% claimed they would tell others what they learned by visiting the exhibit. The second article presents a study that measured visitors' time spent at the exhibit to calculate holding power. Holding power was calculated by dividing the amount of time spent at the exhibit by the minimum amount of time it takes to read the text and interact with the exhibit. The holding power for the What's Bugging Belva? exhibit was favorable at .67 and is compared with exhibits with holding powers of .47 (Boisvert et al, 1995) and .69 (Peart, 1984). The third study gathered visitor data using the validated ALI and analyzed the data using the FREQ procedure (SAS 9.4). The study was conducted at the Indiana State Fair and Purdue Springfest and measured visitors’ responses to an exhibit about animal welfare. At both events, visitors had positive perceptions in the categories of cognitive and general learning, affective learning, behavioral learning, and social learning. Measuring holding power and using the ALI to measure reported attitudinal learning are found to be effective measures for assessing exhibits and the author suggests using the ZPD and the stages of cognitive development for developing exhibit content.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Watson, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Ecology|Zoology
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