The Investigation And Study Of Families In Natural History Museum

Visitors are the objects of museum education and services, and also the social foundation of museum. The study of visitors is the inevitable requirement which will help the museum's development.The study of Museum visitors has been going on for about more than one hundred years, and research subjects have changed with the change of visitors'structure. Since 1980's, owing to the tourism prosperity, the number of family has increased greatly, so the study of families became a very important branch of museum visitor study, this thesis is one part of the branch. This thesis'research objects are the families who visited the Northeast Normal University Natural History Museum, and used the method of questionnaires, tracking and statistical analysis study during the 2008 summer vacation.A great deal of data reveals that families make up half of the non-team visitors in the summer vocation, and two generations of families are the majority, which have at least one children and one parent. The investigation reveals sex ratios are more women than men, and the majority families who are received relatively high formal education, and parents mostly career as a teacher. The majority families who visit the Northeast Normal University Natural History Museum live in the city of Changchun, and who tend to select interesting and convenient route to visit, and believe the leisure values as the main purpose of visit. Families'action is both flexible and disciplinary, and the majority of families seem to stay in museum about more than one hour and less than 2 hours and 35 minuses. The majority families have high-interest on interactive exhibition, and stay for a long time. Most families spend more time on interactive actions and less time on exhibition watching; and would like the museum to organize more participatory learning activities.Finally, based on the investigation, this thesis makes up some advice which may inspire the directors and curators in Museums of Natural History and become a reference in the future.