Post on 19-Oct-2020
transcript
Participant Satisfaction of 21Marbles
PRT 380 Analysis and Evaluation in Parks, Recreation
Caroline Rush, Taylor Erin Williams, Federica Garcia Calderon, Leah Babb
Table of Contents
1
Introduction 3
Methods 4
Findings 4
Conclusions and Recommendations 8
Appendices 10
2
Introduction
Marbles Kids Museum opened in September 2007 after a month of renovations on what
was previously Exploris. Exploris was a forty million dollar global learning center that opened in
1999. Playspace, an interactive children’s museum was located just two blocks away from
Exploris, which made the partnership ideal. Marbles was created as a result of the merger
between Exploris and Playspace. Marbles hosts several different types of events throughout the
year. The 21Marbles event is geared specifically towards adults twenty one and over who want
to come play like a kid without their kids. There is a cash bar where participants can purchase
both beer and wine. Dinner is catered and is included in the price of admission. The activities
usually include human foosball, photo booths as well as access to all the other permanent
museum exhibits such as the pirate ship, hockey rink, and helicopter. Marbles has now put on a
total of five 21Marbles events, with differing games and activities as well as food and beverages.
The first two 21Marbles events sold out extremely fast, whereas the third and fourth took
longer to sell out and the museum was forced to do radio advertisements and other tactics to
make sure all tickets were sold. Afterwards, Marbles decided to change the frequency of the
event. The museum’s group sales department wanted to find out what is successful about the
event and what keeps people coming back. Therefore, we chose to evaluate the participant’s
satisfaction of the fifth 21Marbles event on November 17th, 2017. The criteria that we focused
on was satisfaction with parking, activities, and alcohol. We chose to look at satisfaction with
parking based on a suggestion that Marbles staff offered when we met with them to discuss the
project. On our own, we decided to look at satisfaction with activities and alcohol because it is
something that we believe can always be improved.
3
Methods
The type of data used for this evaluation was quantitative. Minimal qualitative data was
also used to find out the participants’ opinions on the quality of the event. We collected data
through an online Qualtrics survey. This survey can be found in the appendix. After the
21Marbles event, an email was sent out to about 1,000 people who attended the fifth 21Marbles
event by the Marbles staff the following Monday, November 20th, including pictures of the
event and a Qualtrics link to the survey which was open until November 24th. The population of
the survey was the participants that came to the November 17th 21Marbles event. The sample
size gathered was 14 participants out of all approximate 1000 the participants that attended the
event. Our criteria determined who would comprise our population, because if we asked staff
members these questions, we would get skewed, biased, and inaccurate responses. We used
convenience sampling, which is non-random.
Findings
The main findings that we are going to discuss are related to amount of time that it took
to find parking, satisfaction with the games and activities, satisfaction with the variety of alcohol
served, the age that participants at the event are, and their favorite activity of the night.
A representative from Marbles told us that they were interested in learning about how
participants felt about parking downtown and that in the past there had been complaints with
how long it took to find parking on the weekend. Thirteen participants responded to this
question, out of a total of fourteen. The last person did not respond to this question because they
took a bus to get to Marbles. Three out of thirteen respondents said that it took them less than
five minutes to find a place to park. Ten out of those thirteen respondents said that it took them
between five and ten minutes to park. This frequency is represented by figure 1, found below.
4
Another important finding was the satisfaction with the games and activities at the event.
21Marbles is an event that is extremely focused on the games that participants can play. Based
on our results, most people were highly satisfied with the games/activities that were available to
them. We found this by utilizing mode, a measure of central tendency. Most of the respondents
stated that they were highly satisfied with the games. This finding is represented by figure 2,
found below.
Our second finding that was related to games and activities was an open ended response
about participants’ favorite activities of the night. This question allowed the respondent to write
their own response to the question, which lead to a variety of answers. In order to create meaning
from this qualitative data, we had to look for themes from what their responses were. For
5
example, if one participant said that their favorite activity was “nerf guns” and the other said
“nerf gun room”, we lumped those into the same response category. According to this data, three
out of nine respondents said that using Nerf Guns was their favorite part of the night. This was
the highest frequency for this finding. This is represented by figure 3, found below.
6
The next important finding from this data had to do with alcohol. 21Marbles is an event
that is only open to people ages 21 and up. During this event, there is a cash bar that serves beer
and wine. We were interested in finding out how satisfied participants were with the variety of
alcohol available at this event. This question was a likert scale question, where an answer choice
of 1 means extremely satisfied while an answer choice of 5 means extremely dissatisfied. We
had eleven responses to this question, because if someone did not drink during the event, they
were not required to answer. Based on the responses, the mean was 1.9, which suggests that on
average, people were slightly satisfied with the variety of alcohol available at 21Marbles. One
respondent stated “I wish you offered sweeter drinks… the wine choices were all dry wines. I
know I’m in college and so are a lot of people who to this… next time please consider offering
moscato, white zinfandel, and hard ciders…” This finding is represented by figure 4, found
below.
The last important finding was the age distribution of participants at this event. We were
surprised when we began to analyze the data and noticed that for the age ranges of 21-25 years
7
old and 26-31 years old, they both had the same number of respondents. Both of these answer
choices had 6 responses. This frequency is represented by figure 5, found below.
Conclusions and Recommendations
Based on our criteria and the survey we sent out for 21Marbles, we believe that this event
was a success. Results for parking and navigating to the museum showed that participants did not
have trouble finding their way to the event. Participants enjoyed the activities and were satisfied
with them, but could see themselves wanting a variety if they came back to another 21Marbles
event in the future. Satisfaction with variety, taste, and cost of alcohol overall were found to be
slightly satisfying. Participants were either slightly satisfied or extremely satisfied with all of our
criteria; therefore, the recommendations that we have are not drastic.
The first recommendation that we have for Marbles is to offer more variety of drinks at
the 21Marbles event. The 11 responses for satisfaction of variety of drinks had an average of 1.9,
with 1 being extremely satisfied and 2 being slightly satisfied. On average, participants were
slightly satisfied, and one mentioned that she wanted them to offer “sweeter drinks” for the
attendees that are in college and prefer cheaper and sweeter options.
The second recommendation that we have is to start the event at 7:00 PM instead of 6:00
PM. The last question of our survey was an opened ended question asking “if you could change
8
anything about 21Marbles, what would it be?” One response to this question was “...possibly
start at a later time… traffic is horrible at 6 and even before,”. Based on this suggestion, we
recommend to move the event back one hour to make navigating to the event easier.
The third recommendation that we have is to add new activities and games to each event.
There are often repeat guests at 21Marbles, and they should be able to have a different
experience each time. One repeat guest stated that the event should “switch up games” and add
things like “Giant Jenga or something new for returning customers.” From this, we are
suggesting an addition of at least two activities for each new event.
The fourth recommendation that we have is to have more of the 21Marbles event series
throughout the year. Many respondents stated that they wish that they had more time at this event
and that the lines were long for some activities. This is why we propose adding two more
21Marbles events throughout the year. This would help keep the attendance at each event
slightly lower, so that the lines do not get out of hand.
Our last recommendation is to make sure that surveys are sent out multiple times before
they are closed. The survey that was sent out after this event was only sent out once, on Monday,
November 20, and closed a week later. We only got 14 total responses, which is significantly
lower than the amount of participants that were at the event. If this survey would have been sent
out more times, we probably would have received more responses.
9
10
Appendices
Qualtrics Survey:
11
12