Applied Interpretation

So… as we found last week the pre and post visit questionnaires to the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial (JNEM) showed a significant increase in several visitor impacts related to a museum visit. Their connections to the history of westward expansion increased, knowledge of the time period increased and attitude toward the museum improved. But as this author has stated over the months – in this blog as well as his book – results from pencil to paper evaluation instruments may not always show the actual depth and breadth of an interpretive experience.

Therefore, the researchers conducted in depth interviews with twenty of the participants of the quantitative study six months following their JNEM experience. The particular qualitative analysis that was used is defined as phenomenological. This approach evaluates the actual phenomena and its impact on the individual which, in this case, was the visit to the museum and its associated programs. Phenomenology demands an open mindset from the researchers to attempt to view the world as articulated by the participants. So…the interviews are led by the participant and not the researcher. And, in particular, are not influenced by a predetermined set of questions that a survey instrument contains.

The interviews were initiated with the following statement: ‘Can you please describe what you remember and participated in during your visit to the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial?’  A variety of prompts were utilized to gain an understanding of what the participants experienced at the site.  Questions such as ‘Do you recall anything from your visit to the museum’ and ‘what did you think about your experience within the Arch?’ were used to solicit visitor information.  Ensuing statements or questions that stemmed from participants’ responses were utilized in an attempt to clarify the participants’ discussion of the experience.  Interviews remained unstructured and participant-centered in order to promote control of the interviewees’ direction. 

The researchers transcribed the interviews and examined each individually. Initially, concepts, terms, and phrases of the participants’ interviews were identified and the data was “coded” into distinct categories.  Coded words included examples such as tram ride, buffalo, Lewis and Clark, Dred Scott, Courthouse, movie, food, etc.  These categories were then placed together into themes that centered on a variety of information recalled about the museum and its exhibits. These topic areas included the Native American role in westward expansion as well as the Lewis and Clarke expedition. Another recollection that was consistent in the findings was the Arch and its impressions on the visitors. Below is just a small sample of quotes from the twenty interviews:

Jefferson National Expansion Memorial

 It is a double edged sword good and bad.  Proud to be an American and also the Arch signifies another epic area in our history about what we did to the Native Americans and took their properties and their lands. It was good and bad.

For me- it is kind of what it says- the gateway to the West. It is about our country, literally the pioneers moving west and having the courage to go beyond the Mississippi. Which I am sure was a big deal at the time.  And in teaching my kids it was about that applies today because there are a lot of things we still haven’t done as a nation and as a people. We have to have the courage to go beyond the metaphor of it. I think is great. 

Well the tram ride was a very interesting – I wouldn’t call it an ordeal- but my wife is very claustrophobic and riding one of those little tram cars was considerably a challenge that was well worth the experience to get up there. And the wind was blowing just ever so briefly up there and so the arch was moving and that was kind of fun for me, but not too much for the rest of the people in the group that we had. It was very well worth going up there.

These three statements offer recollections related to Native American information, the symbolism of the site, and the “ordeal” of taking the tram to the top of the Arch. This variance represents the results for the qualitative evaluation – that the visit to the JNEM impacted the visitors in a variety of ways.

The significant results from the quantitative survey and the variance of recollections from the qualitative interviews certainly suggest that a visit to JNEM can impact a visitor. However, there is one final question…are the results from the two evaluation approaches similar. In other words, did the people who responded to the interviews with a good deal of thought and retrospection score well in the pre and post visit survey???

We’ll find out next week in the third and final part of this extended blog!!!