DOI: 10.3886/icpsr02229
title: Museum Program Survey, 1979 [United States]
title: Archival Version

description: This survey collected data from 1,373 nonprofit museums in 50 states and the District of Columbia. The sample was drawn from a universe of museums developed in a 1978 National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) museum universe study. The purpose of the study was to estimate the characteristics and educational roles of the nonprofit museum universe. For the purpose of this survey, a museum was defined as an institution organized on a permanent basis for essentially educational or aesthetic purposes, which utilizes a staff, owns or uses tangible objects whether animate or inanimate, cares for these objects, and exhibits them to the public on a regular basis. A stratified, random sample was drawn from a sampling frame of 4,408 museums identified by the 1978 Museum Universe Survey. The survey instrument was mailed to museum directors on December 12, 1979. Non-respondent follow-ups included a reminder letter, telephone follow-up and a second survey mail-out, followed by a final telephone follow-up.
description: The purpose of the study was to estimate the characteristics and educational roles of the nonprofit museum universe.
description: The study was conducted for the National Center for Education Statistics by Macro Systems, Inc. This survey collected data from 1,373 nonprofit museums in 50 states and the District of Columbia. The survey instrument was mailed to museum directors on December 12, 1979. Non-respondent follow-ups included a reminder letter, telephone follow-up and a second survey mail-out, followed by a final telephone follow-up. A 94 percent response rate was achieved. All surveys went through extensive manual and machine edit checks to detect and correct logic and consistency errors. All errors in the submitted data were resolved with museum directors by telephone; an average of three calls per museum were made. Non-critical data items still missing following a reasonable number of follow-up attempts were imputed based on responses of peer museums. Each responding museum was appropriately weighted to represent the 1978 universe of nonprofit museums. In the course of the survey, 49 duplicates were detected in the universe and the original universe size of 4,629 was appropriately adjusted (4,580). Additionally, 21 sampled museums were determined to be not yet open, 3 permanently closed, and 5 did not meet the definition of a museum. The museums in these last three categories are estimated to comprise approximately 172 museums in the universe. Thus, 4,408 nonprofit museums were estimated to be open to the public.
description: Each responding museum was appropriately weighted to represent the 1978 universe of nonprofit museums.
description: Response Rates: Of the 1,373 nonprofit museums surveyed, 94 percent responded to questionnaires mailed to them on December 12, 1979.
description: A stratified, random sample was drawn from a sampling frame of 4,408 museums identified by the 1978 Museum Universe Survey. The sample was stratified by museum type, type of control (nonprofit, public, academic, etc.), size (as defined by operating expenditures), and geographic region. All for-profit museums were eliminated from the universe file prior to drawing the sample.
description: Datasets: 
DS1: Museum Program Survey, 1979 [United States]
description: Nonprofit museums in all 50 states and the District
of Columbia. Smallest Geographic Unit: City
description: mail questionnaireThe study was conducted for the National Center for Education Statistics by Macro Systems, Inc.This data collection was simultaneously distributed by ICPSR as ICPSR 2229 and by the Cultural Policy and the Arts National Data Archive (CPANDA) with the CPANDA Identification Number (study number) of a00001. CPANDA created variable groups and added question text to the codebook as well as conducted the following processing steps for release of this collection: produced a codebook, checked for undocumented codes, performed consistency checks, provided frequencies, performed recodes, and reformatted the data.