1. Museums, health and wellbeing: Methodologies for measuring impact
Helen Chatterjee
Nuala Morse

2. Evaluation: What?
Research is academic enquiry based on standardized methods; advances generalizable knowledge and theory.
Evaluation is a process to find out whether the project has met its aims and how a set of activities is are linked to outcomes and impacts (both positive and negative)
For health and wellbeing project, this means looking at the emotional, psychological, physiological and social processes and other outcomes linked to the museum activities

3. Evaluation: Who for?
Audiences – to find out if what we are doing is working, to find out how we can adapt our approach if it’s not
Organisation – for advocacy, to inform strategy, to improve provision for audiences
Funders – to show how effective our work is and what we have learnt from it
Health sector – for advocacy to prove what we are doing is working

4. Evaluation: Why do it? Various reasons:
Did the activity/programme meets its objectives?
What were the practical challenges for delivery?
Was it (financial) efficient?
What were the unexpected outcomes?
What were the benefits for participants in terms of health, wellbeing or quality of life?

5. Methods of Evaluation + Research
Formative / Summative
Pre-post study design to measure health, and wellbeing outcomes; need a baseline to measure progress against.

6. Different approaches to evaluating for health and wellbeing projects
Qualitative
Quantitative
Considering using validated and standardised evaluation techniques to assess impact

7. Qualitative methods
Enable to capture people’s own perception of their health and wellbeing
More focus on process (rather than outcome)
Methods:
Interviews
Focus Groups
Narrative / Life-history interview
Case studies
Observational methods
Limitations!!

8. Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale
Quantitative methods
Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale

9. Visual Analogue Scales
Emotional (Subjective) Well-being:
PANAS (Positive Affect Negative Affect Scale)

10. UCL Museum Wellbeing Measure

11. Arts Observation Scale (ArtsObS)

12. Co-producing evaluation
In collaboration with specialists/scholars and participants, evaluate the impact of your work for participants and, ideally, your partners.
Undertake a rigorous test and re-test approach to the development of new activities/programmes in association with specialists/scholars/participants

13. Museums benefits health and wellbeing by providing:
Positive social experiences, leading to reduced social isolation
Calming experiences, leading to decreased anxiety
Increased positive emotions (e.g. optimism, hope and enjoyment
Opportunities for learning and acquiring new skills
Increased communication between families, carers and health professionals
Increased inspiration and opportunities for meaning making
Increased self-esteem and sense of identity
Positive distraction from clinical environments
Chatterjee and Noble (2013) Museums, Health and Well-being. Routledge.

14. Not So Grim Up North Investigating the health and wellbeing impacts of taking part in museum activities
ACE funded research project
UCL Researchers, Manchester Museums, TWAM

15. Project Aims
To better understand the impacts of museum activities on health and wellbeing outcomes for:
older adults living with dementia in hospital settings
stroke rehabilitation patients in hospital settings
stroke/ acquired brain injury survivors
adults with mental health issues

16. What did we do? Pilot sessions Co-developing aims
Co-developing methodology
Range of approaches

17. Mixed-methods
UCL Museum Wellbeing Measure: pre and post session; beginning, middle and end.
SWEMWBS and life satisfaction questions, beginning and end, 3 and 6 months-follow up
End of project interviews and follow up interviews

18. Museum Engagement Observation Scale for PWD
Observational tool developed for systematized continuous video analysis
Looks at 6 dimensions of engagement within a museum object handling session:
Morse and Chatterjee (2017) Museums, health and wellbeing research: co-developing a new observational method for people with dementia in hospital contexts. Perspectives in Public Health,

20. Engagement: P5 f Negative engagement with objects
Responds to prompts only
Visual engagement with objects
Explores objects (not engaged in conversation)
Explores objects and engages in conversation
Session 3 (5 minute intervals)
Session 4 (5 minute intervals)
Session 6 (5 minute intervals)

21. Further resources
Creative and Credible how to evaluate arts in health projects -
Alliance website Website:
Coming soon: Creation of web-based ‘how to’ training resources including an online resource, Webinars and advice sheets
Thank you
Helen:
Nuala: