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

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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.

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Appendices

Qualtrics Survey:

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