Ancient Ohio Trail project – Visitor Experience Survey
Executive Summary
June 30, 2009

Central to our efforts in presenting and interpreting the “Ancient Ohio Trail” are current understandings surrounding the earthworks and mounds of Ohio. When inviting cultural engagement with and promoting informed tourism around the Native American cultural structures known generally as the “Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks” [ http://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/5243/ ], our starting point has to be the present state of knowledge among visitors, both local and non-local, and with people residing near the earthworks who come in contact with visitors on a regular basis.

For the purposes of this planning study, we will look primarily at one term of the standard “interpretive equation” used across the country by the National Park Service, the component “knowledge of the audience”:

IO = (KR + KA) x AT

IO (Interpretive Opportunity) = KR (Knowledge of the Resource) + KA (Knowledge of the Audience) x AT (Appropriate Technique)
[ http://www.nps.gov/idp/interp/101/equationwksheet.pdf ]

Since April, in a three month period across the Spring season, Great Circle guestbook visitors, along with locations all around the state of Ohio, listed their hometowns in 30 states, from Hawaii to Maine, Florida to California; internationally from Sweden; Mexico City, Mexico; Southampton, England; multiple locations in Canada; Amsterdam, The Netherlands; and Nanjing, China.

Clearly, the earthworks of Ohio are already drawing a global audience, and a diverse one from all over the United States!

That’s just over 90 days, among the estimated 50% of visitors to the Newark Earthworks visitor center who choose to put their names down in the guestbook. After a bit over a year of operation with the new exhibit space and displays, word is beginning to spread that the “museum at Great Circle” is open regular hours, and visitors are starting to seek out interpretive experiences on their own.

As we will see, non-local visitors, defined as those coming from outside of Licking County, tend to arrive with some knowledge of the archaeology and history currently on record of these mounds and geometric earthworks. What we were particularly curious about for planning purposes were two more audiences, less studied and therefore less well understood.

These two audiences are local visitors, people coming to the site from within a ten mile radius, basically Newark, Heath, and Granville in Licking County; and visitor contact workers, interpretive sources non-formally, but no less influential. Front desk clerks at hotels, fast food cashiers, business and public service staff who are regularly in contact with people who might have occasion to pull in and ask “hey, what do you know about these mounds here?” – those persons have a role in how the site is understood and experienced, or (more problematically) not experienced.

Our survey design was adapted somewhat in practice after an initial development phase with the PI and other members of the AOT team. The baseline approach for Local Visitor Contact people followed this structure:

“Do you know anything about the mounds around here?”

“Who made them?”

“About how old are they”

“What were they built for?”

If the interaction was not under pressure from customers behind the surveyor, and the contact was not largely negative (i.e., “I don’t know, no idea, haven’t the faintest, sorry”), at this point the surveyor would say “Actually, I’m working with the Newark Earthworks Center at OSU-Newark, and we’re trying to find out what people know about the mounds, and how to help the area respond to visitors who want to find out about them: could you give me three words that you would use to describe the mounds?”

Further prompts were given at “Who made them?” if a one word answer – “say a bit more about that/what you mean by BLANK,” and also at “About how old are they” if the answer to start was “oh, I have no idea,” owith“Just give me a ballpark number, how old do you think?”

For the other two audience groups of Local Visitor and Non-Local Visitor, the initial question was adapted to “Do you know anything about these mounds?” since the question was most frequently asked in or immediately next to the Great Circle. Less than 10% of those approached chose not to respond beyond the “do you know anything question,” although a certain, small number, just over 5%, turned away from any contact whatever (with a qualification we will note later). No site surveys were done at Octagon State Memorial, which would be an interesting component of a more extensive survey for KA.

A total of 96 persons were surveyed in person among the three groups, abbreviated as LVC (local visitor contact), NLV (non-local visitor), and LV (local visitor).

The breakdown of these groups is 38 – LVC; 27 – NLV; 31 – LV.

Responses from the NLV audience (NLV) tended to cluster as follows:

“Who made them?” – 85% said “Indians built them” (including the terms Indian, Native American, tribal labels such as Cherokee, Shawnee, or “Tecumseh’s people”; also including “Hopewell” said by 12% of the total). Two persons named Romans and Vikings.

“About how old are they” – 30% said “thousands of years (two of the three said “two thousand years,” the only ones to say that in the entire survey), 60% said “hundreds of years.”

“What were they built for?” – almost 20% said some form of “astronomy/alignments” while 50% said “burials.” The remaining 30% were variations on “ceremony/ritual/dancing/worship/celebrations.”

The “three words to describe” clustered around “huge, amazing, wonderful.”

The responses from the LV audience (31) tended to cluster as follows:

“Who made them?” – 40% said “Indians built them.” 15% said some version of “the WPA/CCC built them,” and 25% were emphatic on “don’t know.” Of the remaining 20%, 6 persons said variations on “UFOs, aliens, mysterious beings,” or one other category we will discuss under LVC.

“About how old are they” – 65% said “hundreds of years,” while 20% said “millions of years.” No one in this group said “thousands.”

“What were they built for?” – over 75% said “burial/burial mounds.” 15% said some version of “a sacred site.”

The “three words to describe” clustered around “quiet, scary, haunted.” Size was rarely mentioned, or age, but “creeps the ‘bleep’ out of me” was a repeated refrain; various “ghost stories” were often shared by persons who chose to continue the conversation, including reports of knocking, poltergeist phenomena, and unusual dog activity by residents in the near vicinity.

The one positive cluster was “quiet,” reflecting the fact that many local residents like to come and visit the site, even many quite emphatic about the “creepy, scary, weird, haunted” qualities, because of a sense that there is a peacefulness and security during the day. Most said “you wouldn’t catch me coming over here after dark.” “Mysterious” and “magical” were used by a number of LV persons, but it was unclear as to the context, positive or negative, that they brought to those descriptions.

The responses from the LVC audience (38) tended to cluster as follows:

“Who made them?” – quite unexpected was almost 25% (9) stating that the mounds were naturally occurring, if unusual phenomena, most confirmed they had Great Circle in mind. If you add two from the LV audience, and use the two local audiences as a set, you arrive at 16% (11 of 69) who see the mounds as naturally occurring phenomena. 55% said “Indians built it,” 13% (5) named specific non-traditional groups, inclusive of Welsh, “lost tribes,” and “UFOs/aliens.”

“About how old are they” – 60% said “hundreds,” 13% “millions,” and the rest “had no idea.”

“What were they built for?” – Over 80% said “burial,” while 2, for 5% said “sacred/ceremonial site.”

The “three words to describe” clustered around “amazing, mysterious, spooky.”

To sum up, first, we would note that you cannot, in fact, summarize these three groups; however, the local visitor and local visitor contact populations cluster together while non-local visitors clearly come with an existing knowledge base out of the scientific and even technical literature which is not as much in evidence with local residents.

One LV and one LVC person named “alignments” as part of “what they were built for,” and further conversation revealed that they both had taken History 151 at OSU-N and took a site tour as part of their class. An intriguing skew was the absence of the term “thousands” from local resident respondents – we suggest that the absence is due to a naïve understanding of history, where the concepts of “hundreds of years ago” is familiar, as is “millions of years ago,” but “thousands of years ago” is not a category that is commonly dealt with in conversation or reading.

But in general, we can say this: most audience members state that the earthworks of Ohio are made by Indians (the term “Native American” was used by 3% of the gross total), they are “hundreds of years old,” and they are built “for burials.” Given that last predominant image, it is perhaps no surprise that the words “spooky, haunted, mysterious” are more frequent than “huge, amazing, historic.” “Magical, mystical, beautiful” are a close third, with “ancient, valuable, historical” a distant final grouping.

To hear that 16% of the local audiences understood the mounds as natural in origin was unexpected, but part of KA, “knowledge of the audience” that we need to know.

* * *

The visitor center itself was the subject of a visitor study, looking at usage and patterns. For this very brief planning study, four two hour periods were studied, on a weekday from 10 am to Noon and from 2 pm to 4 pm, and both a Saturday and a Sunday from 2 pm to 4 pm. A fifth weekday morning was studied, but due to weather and other factors, only four visitors came in and three stayed a very long (around 1 hour) period of time; staff input said that this was a highly atypical morning, and so those visits were not calculated into the time of visit and numbers, but their movements in the museum to start were included in the general exhibit usage study.

The approach used in the Newark Earthworks/Licking County Convention and Visitor’s Bureau visitor’s center, referred to subsequently as the Great Circle museum, was for the surveyor to sit in the chair behind a low wall, forming a “kiosk” for large group presentations. The surveyor would focus on reading material in front of them, and not make eye contact with visitors, which was not unusual due to the configuration of the space. If a visitor saw the surveyor and spoke directly to them, then all due courtesy and communication would pick up from that point – almost none of the visitors to the Great Circle museum noticed the surveyor until they were about to leave, if then.

This location meant that visitor interaction with the large mural opposite the greeter desk and diorama under the north wall arch was limited to sound cues only; the study attempted to include a number of observations of the central area while standing near the attendant/greeter, but the chance of influence in the confined space was naturally greater. Input from the two persons most frequently at the greeter desk is included near the conclusion of this summary.

The sample weekday morning saw 24 visitors for a total of 111 minutes; the average group size was 2 persons, and the average visit was 4.625 minutes.

The sample weekday afternoon saw 25 persons for a total of 143 minutes; the average group size was 1.66 persons, and the average visit was 5.72 minutes.

The sample Saturday afternoon saw 29 persons for a total of 137 minutes; the average group size was 1.5 persons, and the average visit was 4.72 minutes.

The sample Sunday afternoon saw 19 persons for a total of 272 minutes; the average group size was 2.4 persons, and the average visit was 14.3 minutes.

In aggregate, the sample saw 97 persons for a total of 663 minutes; the average group size was 1.89 persons, median group 3.1, and the average visit was 6.835 minutes.

Over 76% of visitors either themselves, or at least one member of their group, went directly to the restrooms on entering the building. Over 12% interacted only with the restrooms and the gift shop items (while, given the viewing location, their viewing of the mural is likely but not certain).

Not quite 20% tap the touch screen (19), of that 1 in 5, just less than 1 in 3 (6) go past the first segment, but of those viewers, the average number of clicks into the program is 12 – with no single pattern predominating. It can be safely said that those who choose to interact with the touch screen program often do so extensively, but the number who make the first steps could be improved.

Site staff report continued problems with people seeing “Touch Screen To Start,” though this was not observed in the study – adding the word “Computer” before “Screen” might help. It was observed that people would often try repeatedly to click words, and not the white square, but this did not seem to lead to termination of the interaction session.

The typical visit to the Great Circle museum might best be broken into weekday and weekend experiences, with the average visit being 5.2 minutes weekdays; and 8.5 minutes on weekends.

We looked at the fact that group by group, three-fourths of all groups start all or in part in the restrooms. Should some element of communicating site themes and messages be included in restroom décor? Are there simple, short phrases or images that could be placed in those locations where the overwhelming majority of site visitors begin their interpretive experience?

More than one in ten do not get beyond the restrooms, literature racks, and gift shop – are there ways beyond the books offered for sale to ensure a portion of the interpretive experience is delivered to those visitors?

From the viewpoint of those who serve at the greeter desk, almost every visitor stops to look at the large mural. Often an invitation to help orient the guest is met with appreciation, and they are told “where they are” in the picture. The greeters, and some limited observation during this study agreed, that almost all visitors tend to swivel past the diorama under the north wall arch fairly quickly.

One possibility mentioned was the relative darkness of the display elements causing the diorama to “disappear” – could LED lights be used, embedded behind the photo around each moon in the time lapse, slowly tracking up and then re-starting at the bottom, clicking upwards again; this would both communicate that the moon is rising in the viewscape presented, and also draw eyes into the display.

Two-thirds of visitors who enter the main display area do so from the north side. Tracking the interactions with display material showed a fairly significant set of differences between those who enter from the north (diorama) end and those who enter from the south (restroom) end.

North entrants tend to go directly to the Bear/Wray figurine panel, pause, scan right, and go to the south wall of the alcove where the computer imaged depictions of a variety of earthworks are on panels. Pausing there, they then scan right, and pause again with the objects of copper and mica, their contrast and irregularity standing out and usually attracting steps toward those panels.

From that point, visitors sort into two groups: those who then turn again to their right, scan the timeline, and then half of those will move towards the touch screen arm; or those who glance around quickly, and then leave.

South entrants follow a very different pattern. They step into the open space, and most often turn left, and move towards the copper/mica display – again, the contrast and irregularity seem to make that element stand out. Then about half turn to the faces on the north side of the alcove, pausing to read, and then do next what the other half started to do, which is turn to the Bear/Wray figurine panel, from which they either scan or pause on the timeline panels, or turn back and leave the way they entered.

We do not have solid numbers for this, but the general impression is that weekend visitors tend to turn from the Bear/Wray figurine panel to the Sacred Site panel and pause again, while weekday visitors hardly seemed to notice it, scanning past to the timeline or beyond. This may be due to the number of weekend visitors being non-local and taking more time.

Also hard to pin down, but seemingly quite clear, is that visitors are not making the connection between the Bear/Wray panel, which is very successful in gathering visitor interest, and the replica figurine. Visually, and in terms of movement, it is hard to see how any visitor could be or is making that connection. We would suggest, even before a more comprehensive visitor study and exhibit analysis, that at eye level, adjoining the Bear/Wray panel, either the replica be moved or a second replica be installed.

Additional signage next to the touch screen arm is called for, helping focus the visitor on the technology, which was perceived by some visitors out loud as intimidating (“I’m not sure how to use this; wow, how does this thing work; do you think it’s OK to move this around?”), and perhaps offering a sample sequence of three or four “clicks” to get started.

* * *

One further suggestion, and then a very emphatic hope for future study will round out this executive summary of our attempt to gain better KA, “knowledge of the audience” for the Ohio earthworks and mounds.

Local visitors are in many cases lower income residents of neighborhoods within easy walking distance of the Great Circle. We were startled to find out just how many people are on the grounds of an early evening, right down to sunset. Families, couples, people with dogs (many, many people with dogs on long leashes), groups of kids (yes, often with one or two on bikes) are all over the site; on one grounds survey for LV audience members, as the sun set on a Monday, there were 18 people within view from sitting on the front of Eagle Mound on the wall’s summit or within the enclosure.

The parking areas are complicated. The survey benefited from past conversation with the previous site manager for many years’ service, and the site manager until just a few months ago of seventeen years service on the site. It is well known in the larger metro area that the relatively secluded parking areas are popular for couples to meet, particularly couples who are not necessarily supposed to be in each others’ company. The truth of this received knowledge is hard to verify, but it is the case that approaching a parked vehicle in the lots, even by broad daylight (maybe even especially around lunchtime), meant sudden departures in almost every case. We did not attempt to speak to any parking lot visitors after the first few attempts.

But the families and couples and children walking (and biking) the grounds of an evening represent an interesting challenge. Almost everyone approached of an evening was happy to share their impressions, used the words “spooky, creepy, mystical, haunted” about the mounds as a description, and had never been in the museum. Would a few evening open houses, aimed specifically at local residents, create an opening for education and awareness that would also build local partnership on the most grassroots level, and perhaps also add a layer of watchfulness and stewardship that currently is only effected by the perception of ghostly guardians?

What we most would like to be able to accomplish on the site, and others like it, are pre- and post- surveys of KR, “knowledge of the resource.” How does interaction with the exhibits, displays, and site interpreters change the KR among our audiences? This kind of study will allow even more specific and effective recommendations to flow out of the work being done on the “Ancient Ohio Trail.”

Finally, a near universal question came in myriad forms – can we have more wayside interpretive panels around the site? The longest pauses and focused attention observed anywhere on the site, other than regarding the site itself, are on the bronze disc on a pedestal in front of the Great Circle museum. Visitors of all sorts crave signage that helps them see what they are looking at.

Such additions to the site will be expensive, but along with occasional, regular evening open houses focused on the neighborhoods adjoining the site, it sounds likely that the investment will not only pay dividends, but they will join in protecting that investment from casual mistreatment and vandalism.

Increasing the “sense of place” for local audiences of all sorts will promote connections, personal and social, of the kind discussed in the AOT Humanities Themes, which we append to conclude this report – along with the sincere hope that further study of KA, KR, and AT (appropriate technique) for the sites along the Ancient Ohio Trail will take place, improving the Interpretive Opportunities for all involved.


* * *

AOT Humanities Themes recap

1. How the earthworks stand today as markers of a distant culture, and how despite the gaps in time and in records we can understand that world and identify with it as a scene of shared humanity.

2. How the earthworks and mounds compare to the achievements of other ancient cultures across the world, whose architectural “ruins” we admire.

3. How modern archaeological research uncovers and tests explanations of what the sites mean, how they were built and used, and how their makers lived.

4. How our understandings of the earthworks can extend beyond archaeology and into a range of other interpretations.

5. How the early decades of Euro-American settlement in the Ohio Valley became the context for encounters, questions, myths, struggles, and fascinations concerning the earthwork sites, their makers, and their meanings, and who was involved in them, from first European contact through the beginnings of scientific archaeology.

6. How modern travelers to the region can gain a meaningful perspective on the earthwork
builders, and how they can connect their lives with those who lived and built among the hills and valleys of this region so differently, long ago.

* * *
* * *

A few last general observations (June 30, 2009) --

The abstract of the executive summary might best be put this way:

Visitors & staff in the area around Ohio earthworks think that the mounds were
* built by Indians,
* hundreds of years ago,
* for burial purposes.

Small but significant subgroups think the mounds are natural phenomena, more than think they are the product of alien or European cultures, and a little less than those who think they are products of Depression era work camps. Non-local visitors tend to come with knowledge such as "Hopewell" and "two thousand years" and "alignments," and local visitors/staff who know that have taken History 151 at OSU-N.

Non-local visitors perceive the mounds as "huge, beautiful, amazing," while local visitors & contact persons see "spooky, haunted, mysterious."

The average visitor to the Great Circle museum spends six and a half minutes inside, two of that starting in the restroom; one in five trigger the CD-ROM program and one in three of those do more than one click . . . but those stay with the program, clicking a dozen times or more, for a ten minute experience. The Bear/Wray panel and the copper/mica artifacts attract the most focused attention in the display area, along with the large mural in the lobby.

* * *

Further work on the question of what people mean by "Indians," on the "who made these" inquiry will be very fruitful; some conversations went on in that direction, but infrequently enough after the baseline set of questions that i'm reluctant to generalize from that data set.

Also of interest is a dual phenomena in talking to clerks, cashiers, and front desk staff at fast food, restaurant, gas, and lodging establishments. Again, the total sample and limitations of starting with the baseline questions means i have only fragmentary indications to work with, but there were two kinds of responses on the "ends" of the response continuum. A number said, explicitly, "boy, we really oughta have some flyers or something for us to get out for you/for us to look at/to use to answer questions like this -- but i just don't know anything, other than i hear about 'em." There does seem to be an opening on the level of service staff to welcome a user-friendly quick information guide to the mounds. Short, punchy, specific, since these are often 30 second interactions that are pressed by people stepping into line behind you, but a desire to be able to communicate something about the area mounds was clearly present.

But there was also a set of reactions almost as large that was nervous, uncomfortable, and almost furtive -- glancing around to see who was listening, whether other customers or managers. "Why do you want to know?" Many of the insistent "I don't know anything about those mounds" responses had an overtone of "I don't want to get involved in that stuff," but circumstances did not lend themselves to further follow-up in almost every such case.

This second guest services phenomena could have something to do with other preconceptions, such as New Age or nature religion beliefs, conservative Judeo-Christian perspectives, or a "ghost story" of the sort I heard many of when talking to local visitors on the site . . . but would not have had the chance to hear in a service related transaction. Arranging a few focus groups of service personnel at the NEC in their off hours, with incentives for participation and confidentiality, might be useful to understand this reaction.

But i did hear from a number of respondents a clear message that "there are people who don't want you talking about those mounds," and in one case, i heard very specifically about how they had been married at Moundbuilders Country Club, and had been "harangued" by the manager there during meetings to plan the service and reception about the "myths and silliness" around the earthworks, that were all "blown up by the militia years ago and rebuilt."

Finally, i think the frequent inquiry about wayside exhibits on the grounds could be addressed with some guided visitor experiences, a sort of "mobile focus group," where information about the "what" and "where" of exhibit stations and/or access to audio/cell phone/device-based material could be best tested and planned, all of which relates very directly to the Ancient Ohio Trail plans.

* * *
* * *

On Jun 30, 2009, at 9:14 AM, Brad Lepper wrote:

Hi everybody,

This is a wonderful study (partially because it confirms some things I strongly suspected, but mainly because it goes beyond assumptions and suspicions and collects actual data to address important questions)! There are surprises. I am surprised that even a small percentage of actual visitors to the park thought the mounds were natural, but I certainly was aware that many local people that pass the parks every day (such as the car salesman I've often spoken of) have no awareness that the mounds represent anything more than natural features -- "Mounds? What mounds?" I was also surprised at the relatively large numbers of folks who view the site as scary and haunted. Maybe we can get on one of those cable ghost-hunter shows?!

One thing I would have liked to see with regard to time visitors spent in the museum is some indication of variance in the sample -- such as standard deviations and/or ranges to go with the means and medians.

John -- Please let me know if (when) I can share this document with folks here at OHS. I am not sure, given our budget situation, how soon we can implement any of the recommended changes, but it would be valuable for OHS staff to see the recommendations as well as the obvious value of survey work such as this this.

Jeff -- Thanks for sharing!

Brad

* * *
* * *

This is chart and table free summary, but the time study can be broken down a number of ways, depending on what's useful. I can tell you on the fly that the visits range from 1 to 25 minutes (rounding to nearest minute; i.e. 29 sec no increment, 31 sec next minute), with the only visits past 25 being the three people i mentioned on the weekday morning that i didn't use. The most common visit "minute numbers" were 4 & 6. If you look at visitors as parties, a bit more than half were single visitors, with the most common visitor parties being pairs and trios.

Single visitor to total number of "parties" ratios: Sat., 13/19; Sun., 1/8; weekday am 5/12; weekday pm 12/17 -- aggregate, 31/56, meaning 55% of all visits were single visitor parties, but they were 32% of the total number of visitors (31/97). Single visitors averaged 5.4 minutes, so if anything a bit faster than the groups, not by much . . . their range was 1 to 22 minutes, but i don't have a median calculated yet.

But we can crunch that data out in whatever manner is deemed useful!

The issues of "scary" and "burials" certainly point us to some interpretive issues, as does the relative absence of the term "Hopewell" in public knowledge. I'm intrigued by what an evening series of open houses, with some lemonade on a table out front and a cheerful "welcome, feel free to use the restrooms" would get us in terms of local ownership and interest -- but there i go spending Susan's money, let alone OHS's!

Pax,
Jeff Gill
http://knapsack.blogspot.com
http://twitter.com/Knapsack