Exhibit appraisal and diverse populations: Pilot research about intersectional and science identities in science exhibits

作为加强非正式环境中学习的总体战略的一部分，推进非正式STEM学习（AISL）项目资助了用于各种环境的创新研究、方法和资源。本项目将探讨如何理解参观者对科学博物馆展品的体验，从而提高不同观众的参与度。博物馆在了解展览设计如何支持未被充分代表的观众方面取得了长足的进步，但往往倾向于关注个别人口群体，如女性、某些种族和少数民族以及残疾人。该项目将探索游客的人口统计和科学身份之间的关系，以评估使用科学身份作为交叉代理的可行性，这可以帮助该领域摆脱对人口统计的依赖。在之前国家科学基金资助的关于博物馆参与的研究的基础上，该项目将评估理论——一种关于人们如何对表现在情绪中的情况进行有意识和潜意识评估的心理学模型——应用于非正式的学习环境。迄今为止，博物馆倾向于关注参与的认知和行为方面。评价理论可以将情感过程添加到参与的概念理解中，并可以应用于帮助展览专业人员开发维护复杂身份的设计框架。这样的框架可能会对博物馆、学校和其他教育环境中学习体验的包容性设计产生影响。这项试点和可行性研究将解决有关研究方法可行性的方法和理论问题，该研究方法考虑了以下关系：1)展览设计特征；2)科学认同、人口统计学认同、自我定义的个人认同等多重认同因素；3)访客评价；4)参与展览。该项目由波士顿科学博物馆（Museum of Science）和EdTogether（一个致力于包容性设计的非营利性研发组织）的研究人员领导，将从预试点阶段开始，在此期间，研究人员将与当地社区组织的青年和专业顾问合作，测试一套数据收集方法，包括以问卷和访谈形式的自我报告；对访客参与度的观察；生物特征数据收集包括皮肤电反应和眼动追踪。从这个预试点阶段开始，团队将进行四项小型研究，在收集数据以测试研究人员假设的设计、身份、评估和参与模型的同时，迭代地改进措施，以提高有效性和节俭性。通过四个小型研究测试该模型的证据将为旨在探索交叉身份、科学身份、评估和游客参与之间因果关系的更大规模研究奠定基础。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

As part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program funds innovative research, approaches, and resources for use in a variety of settings. This project will explore how understanding visitors' experiences with science museum exhibits may contribute to increasing engagement among diverse audiences. Museums have made great strides in understanding how exhibit design can support underrepresented audiences, but often tend to focus on individual demographic groups such as females, certain racial and ethnic minorities, and people with disabilities. This project will explore relationships between visitors' demographic and science identities to assess the affordances of using science identity as an intersectional proxy that could help the field move beyond its reliance on demographics. Building on prior National Science-funded work about museum engagement, the project applies appraisal theory--a psychological model about how people make conscious and subconscious assessments of situations that manifest in emotions--to the informal learning context. To date, museums have tended to focus on cognitive and behavioral aspects of engagement. Appraisal theory can add emotional processes to the conceptual understanding of engagement, and can be applied to help exhibit professionals develop a design framework that upholds complex identities. Such a framework could have implications for inclusive design of learning experiences in museums, schools, and other educational contexts.This Pilot and Feasibility Study will address methodological and theoretical questions about the feasibility of a research approach that considers the relationships among: 1) exhibit design features; 2) multiple identity factors including science identity, demographics, and self-defined personal identity; 3) visitor appraisals; and 4) engagement with exhibits. Led by researchers at the Museum of Science, Boston and EdTogether, a non-profit research and development organization for inclusive design, the project will begin with a pre-piloting phase during which researchers will work with youth and professional advisors from local community organizations to test a suite of data collection approaches including self-report in the form of questionnaires and interviews; observations of visitor engagement; and biometric data collection including galvanic skin response and eye tracking. Building from this pre-piloting phase, the team will conduct four mini-studies that will iteratively refine measures towards enhanced validity and parsimony while gathering data to test the investigators' hypothesized model of design, identity, appraisal, and engagement. The evidence from testing this model through the four mini-studies will lay the foundation for larger-scale research that intends to explore causal relationships among intersectional identities, science identities, appraisal, and visitor engagement.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.