An essential element of good performance management for museums, libraries and archives is measuring participaton and satisfaction: knowing who is and is not using your service, and what users think of the service on offer.
The sector has a strong track record of using such information to plan improvement , for instance working with particular groups or communities to deliver specific outcomes that they value, or to improve visitor experiences. Below are some of the mechanisms that can be used to measure participation and satisfaction.
Participation
The National Indicator set for Local Authorities and Local Partnerships includes indicators NI9 and NI10 relating to the proportion of the population of a local authority area who participate in libraries or museums and galleries. Collected by a survey which uses a sample of the local resident population, this can be used to assess the participation levels across a whole local area. These indicators will be collected and reported for all local areas in England.
No residents’ survey relating to archive usage is undertaken, but local authority archive services can make use of CIPFA Archive Services Estimates (registration required) of usage of local archive services.
Socio-economic and demographic user data relating to users of museum, library and archive services is gathered by the following user surveys:
- MUSE survey Museums
- PLUS survey Public Libraries
- PSQG Survey Archives
Satisfaction
The following user surveys include satisfaction questions for users of museums, libraries and archives:
- MUSE survey Museums
- PLUS survey Public Libraries
- PSQG Survey Archives