Approval is requested to conduct information collection for
Museums for All Evaluation
Section A. Justification
A.1. Necessity of the Information Collection
The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) provides support for Museums for All (M4A) through a cooperative agreement with the Association of Children’s Museums (ACM). The agreement has been ongoing since March 2014. The Museums for All program is designed to invite museums to allow Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) card holders to receive free or reduced-price admission to their facilities. To participate in M4A, museums complete a registration form. Upon registering for the program, museums report quarterly attendance use of the M4A program and stories or testimonials from visitors.
The proposed Museums for All Evaluation is budgeted at $20,000. Per the Cooperative Agreement MG-00-14-0075-14, ACM will conduct a summative evaluation to understand the implications of participating in the Museums for All project on participating museums and help plan for future improvements and broader implementation of the program. Using a mix of qualitative and quantitative data collection methods, the evaluation will ascertain the extent to which the M4A project has influenced participating museums with regards to the museum’s organizational and ticketing practices, community partnerships, and future programmatic offerings.
About IMLS
The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) is the primary source of federal support for the nation's 123,000 libraries and 35,000 museums. IMLS' mission is to create strong libraries and museums that connect people to information and ideas. IMLS works at the national level and in coordination with state and local organizations to sustain heritage, culture, and knowledge; enhance learning and innovation; and support professional development.
About ACM:
Started in 1962, the Association of Children’s Museums (ACM) is a professional member service organization for the children’s museum field. With more than 400 members in 48 states and 20 countries, ACM leverages the collective knowledge of children's museums through convening, sharing, and dissemination.
About M4A:
Museums for All is a cooperative initiative between ACM and IMLS to offer a signature access program that encourages families of all backgrounds to visit museums regularly and build lifelong museum habits. Museums for All is a way to broaden a museum’s visitor base and reach out to underserved communities. Participating museums offer individual admission fees ranging from $0 to $3.00 (USD) to individuals and families presenting an Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) card and a valid form of photo ID. The institutions also train sales and front line staff to ensure good customer service to individuals and families using the program. Approximately 180 museums currently participate in M4A.
Legislative authority
IMLS legislative authority is located at 20 U.S.C. 9101, et seq.
A.2. Purposes and Uses of the Data
IMLS is working with the Association of Children’s Museums (ACM), under the cooperative agreement, as amended, to conduct a program evaluation to understand the extent to which the M4A program has contributed to changes in organizational, programmatic, and partnership structures of participating museums. Results will be used for benchmarking and planning purposes.
The following questions were designed to frame this proposed evaluation study:
1. How have participating institutions implemented the Museums for All program within their organizations and with respect to their own community’s contexts?
2. In what ways has participation and implementation of the Museums for All programming supported or catalyzed change in participating institutions?
What changes have occurred organizationally and operationally?
What changes have occurred through or within partnerships?
What changes have occurred financially?
What community-related changes have occurred?
3. How do institutions envision their future Museums for All programming?
Data for this study will be collected in two phases.
Phase One: Current M4A museum participants will be invited to complete a participating museum survey that will explore the various implementation strategies of participating M4A museums, including how the museums’ organizational and partnership structures have shifted to provide the M4A program. The sample will include all participating museums, thereby making the first phase of the study a census survey (Please refer to Part B, Section 1.3 for more information). To add context to this information, the evaluator will confidentially connect responses to the institution’s M4A program administrative information (e.g., institution type, operating budget, length of M4A participation, and attendance records). This contextual information will, primarily, be used during analysis to segment the data and help understand the degree to which length of participation, institution type, location, and programmatic elements affect results. Contextual information will be treated confidentially by the third-party evaluator.
Phase Two: A stratified sample of 15-18 participating museum survey respondents will be asked to participate in a follow-up telephone interview. The selection process for identifying the 15-18 museums whose M4A representatives are interviewed will be based on variations in (1) museum type, (2) geographic location, (3) program model structures, and (4) length of time offering the M4A program, providing a diverse cross-section or M4A participating museums. Follow-up interviews will more deeply explore M4A experiences of individual institutions and gather further details on the circumstances of the participating museum, its organizational and operational structures, its partnerships and community engagement, and its successes and challenges in relation to training staff and implementing the program; the interview will provide nuances beyond what was shared in the participating museum survey.
Information collected will be used by four different audiences:
Internal Audiences:
ACM and IMLS: To support the program’s continual evolution and improvement and to help communicate the lessons learned from M4A to the professional museum community.
External Audiences:
Current M4A museum participants: To promote ongoing engagement with the program and provide inspiration and examples for how to use and maximize the M4A experience for visitors and museum staff.
Museum field: To illustrate the adoption of promising practices in the application of the M4A program and to encourage future registrants to the program.
Policy makers: To show the results of federal dollars spent on the development, implementation, and management of M4A.
The final evaluation report will be posted on the IMLS and ACM websites. We anticipate the final report will include the following sections: executive summary; introduction to and brief history of the M4A program; evaluation study goals; methodology; summary and analysis of findings for each question (overall and differentiated by museum type, size, location, and M4A program model); holistic analysis of the organizational structures and processes M4A has influenced; program recommendations; and appendices.
A.3. Use of Information Technology
IMLS and ACM will create an online survey to simplify the data collection process.
ACM will vet email addresses of M4A participants to ensure that a final contact list is valid and current.
A.4. Efforts to Identify Duplication
This proposed evaluation study is the first experience-focused evaluation of the M4A program. After beginning as a pilot program in October 2014, ACM has been gathering attendance data from participating museums since October 2015. No data has been collected from museum staff with regard to the experience of hosting the program. No questions in the participating museum survey or follow-up interviews will seek to collect any information currently being collected through quarterly and administrative reporting by M4A institutions to ACM.
A.5. Methods Used to Minimize Burden on Small Businesses
For all museum representatives, both large and small, participation in Museums for All (M4A) Evaluation is entirely voluntary.
A.6. Consequences of Less Frequent Data Collection
Museums for All aims to continuously innovate and improve in an effort to provide participating institutions with the highest-quality materials, guidance, and support that enable them to be successful in organizational improvement and program implementation. Without implementation of this data collection, this program would stagnate. Not only would it become irrelevant to participants, ACM would not have the potential to expand the program and meet the needs of evolving museums. IMLS also seeks to have current data to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the implications of its programs.
A.7. Special Circumstances
No special circumstances require the collection to be conducted in a manner inconsistent with the guidelines in 5 CFR 1320.6.
A.8. Consultations Outside the Agency
Public comments solicited through Federal Register
IMLS published a notice in the Federal Register with a 60-day public comment period to announce this proposed information collection on January 18, 2017 (FR vol. 82, No. 11, pgs. 5608-5609). A copy of the Federal Register Notice is provided. No comments were received.
Consultants outside the agency
As part of the cooperative agreement referenced above, IMLS has closely consulted with the Association of Children’s Museums and its external evaluation firm, Aurora Consulting, in the development of the evaluation plan and data collection instruments/forms.
A.9.
Payments or Gifts to Respondents
No payments or gifts will be offered to respondents for this study.
A.10.
Assurance of Confidentiality
Any personally identifiable data collected from museum staff (e.g., the name of the person who responded on behalf of the museum) will be kept confidential by the evaluator, unless otherwise required by law. Any personal data associated with published work (i.e., final report) will be used only if approved by the participant. Assurances of confidentiality, which is subject to applicable law, will be conveyed in a “consent” section at the beginning of the survey instrument and at the outset of the follow-up phone interview.
A.11. Justification for Sensitive Questions
There are no sensitive questions on the Museums for All (M4A) Evaluation forms.
A.12. Estimates of Hour Burden to Respondents
The total number of respondents anticipated during the program is 138. The burden per respondent is estimated to be an average of 10 minutes per survey (100 respondents, total) and 20 minutes for the telephone interview (18 respondents). The estimated total annual burden is 26 hours.
A.13. Estimates of Annualized Cost Burden to Respondents
According to the Department of Labor, the mean annual wage rate for a museum technician is $21.58, based on full time work, 40 hours/week, 52 weeks/year (May 2015):
|
No. of Respondents |
Annual Frequency per Response |
Estimated Hours per Response |
Total Hours |
Hourly Rate per Respondent |
Total Cost |
Participating Museum Survey |
120 |
1 |
0.17 |
20 |
$ 21.58 |
$ 431.60 |
Telephone Interview |
18 |
1 |
0.33 |
6 |
$ 21.58 |
$ 129.48 |
TOTALS |
138 |
1 |
0.19 |
26 |
$ 21.58 |
The Estimated Total Cost Burden is $561 (26 hours burden times $21.58 average wage).
A.14. Estimates of Annualized Cost to Federal Government
The cost of the cooperative agreement with Aurora Consulting is $20,000. Most of this cost is for program development, implementation, reporting, and management for the evaluation study. Approximately $400 will be spent on data collection efforts.
A.15. Reason for Program Changes or Cost Adjustments
There are no changes.
A.16. Project Schedule
The following provides an overview of the project’s key milestones and timeline:
Project Phase |
Timeframe |
PROJECT DESIGN:
|
October 2016 – June 2017 |
PROJECT REVIEW:
|
September – October 2017 |
PHASE ONE:
|
December 2017 – January 2018* |
PHASE TWO:
|
February 2018 |
DATA ANALYSIS:
|
March – April 2018 |
FINAL DELIVERABLES:
|
April 2018
|
*Participating museum survey will be open for approx. 2-4 weeks depending on response rate
A.17. Request to Not Display Expiration Date
No exemption from the requirements to display the expiration date for OMB approval of the information collection is being requested for the Museums for All (M4A) Evaluation. The OMB approval number and expiration date will be displayed on all data collection materials and documentation.
A.18. Exceptions to the Certification
No exceptions to the certification statement identified in Item 19, “Certification for Paperwork Reduction Act Submissions,” of OMB Form 83-I apply to the Museums for All (M4A) Evaluation.
| File Type | application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document |
| Author | Christopher Reich |
| File Modified | 0000-00-00 |
| File Created | 2021-01-21 |