Questionnaire Purpose and Design

Questionnaires were developed to explore the characteristics of domestic family visitors and their experiences prior to and during the attraction visit. Although the questionnaire was designed to survey only one family member (and for ethical reasons, this person had to be 18 years of age or over), during the course of administering the questionnaires it frequently emerged that other family members including children involved themselves in the research because they were all sitting in a group and listening anyway. Consequently, family members answered the questions jointly which resulted in responses that mostly contained the views and opinions of the whole family group including adults and children alike. Adults spoke on behalf of children, talking about their experiences which usually children themselves divulged prior to or during the research. Children were not always included in the discussion of answers, but were included in the vast majority of cases and therefore this research needs to be seen as a study of the whole family group as a unit, including an intergenerational perspective, instead of just a study from the parental/adult perspective.

The questionnaire was carefully planned, structured, and pilot tested in order to ensure the appropriate questions and sections were included: introduction, family travel and park visiting information, motivation, experiences at the attraction, satisfaction with the visit, changes in holiday and attraction visitation patterns, and demographics (see Appendix B). Closed questions were included in the questionnaire in order to easily group answers concerning family characteristics, motivation, and demographics, while open-ended questions were included to gather in-depth spontaneous answers based on ideas and issues raised by the participants themselves concerning family motivations, experiences, and satisfaction (McIntosh, 1998). Details about the individual sections are provided in the following paragraphs.

The purpose of the introduction was to familiarise the participant with the researcher, outline the need for this research, provide reasons for participation, and give details of the project. Furthermore, the introduction checked the suitability of respondents for the study clarifying their current New Zealand residency and attendance at the visitor attraction with a

40 family group. In order to familiarise the participants with the procedure and the researcher, the actual questionnaire commenced with closed questions that were easy to answer. Questions in this section (section two) explored family travel and visitation patterns for this specific attraction visit.

Sections three to five had the purpose of investigating the whole family visitor experience pre, during, and at the conclusion of the visit. Part three of the questionnaire identified families‟ own conscious motivation to visit the attraction (McIntosh, 1998). It also investigated the degree to which specific motive items (generated by reviewing previous research like Chuo and Heywood (2006), Moutinho (1988), Pearce and Lee (2005)) motivated the visitation of respondents rated on a five-level Likert scale from strongly disagree to

strongly agree (Burns & Burns, 2008; Collis & Hussey, 2009; Jennings, 2001). This part of the questionnaire aimed to explore family motivation to visit attractions as well as similarities and differences in family motivations. Part four gained a valuable insight into family on-site experiences at the visitor attraction. Open-ended questions enabled participants to define their experiences themselves telling about family activities, enjoyment, and main interests as well as their engagement with on-site photography. Part five was developed to investigate family satisfaction with the access to the attraction, value for money, educational and entertainment opportunities, food and drinks, and their overall experience. This section also identified suggestions for improvement. Although the researcher wanted participants to express their satisfaction, the results rather provided further valuable information about family on-site experiences instead of family satisfaction or dissatisfaction.

Section six included questions about current family holiday and attraction visitation patterns and any changes to those patterns within the last 18 months, prompted by the recent economic crisis. This section contained a combination of closed questions for the quantitative identification of current holiday and attraction visitation patterns and open questions to investigate the mode and reason for any change in patterns. The aim of section seven was to identify family group characteristics and demographic details to profile respondents. Questions on age, education, income, and gender were in line with standard practices. In terms of ordering, the demographic questions were placed towards the end due to their potential sensitivity.

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A pilot test of the questionnaire was conducted with friends who had visited at least one of the three visitor attractions with a family group in order to refine the understanding of questions and check for problems in recording the data. Inappropriateness and grammatical errors were highlighted and refined. During this process of refinement some questions became more open-ended and the general flow of sections became more streamlined, logical and engaging.

3.3.2.2 Data Collection

A convenience sampling technique was chosen to select potential respondents on each day within the two week research period. Potential respondents needed to be current New Zealand residents visiting the attraction with a family group. The interviewer prospected for families consisting of parents and their children, grand-parents and children, three generation families or other arrangements. As a result of human ethics considerations, respondents completing the survey had to be 18 years or older, and were selected on the basis on being the person most closely related to the child or children in the group. If two or more respondents were equally as closely related (for example, a mother and a father), the person who had had the most recent birthday was selected as the respondent. In total, 300 family groups (n =100 at each attraction) were surveyed. Families were surveyed on a „next to pass‟ basis as they left the attraction in order to ensure information about their whole visitor attraction experience could be gathered. After introducing the research, the visitor was given plenty of time to read the research information sheet, decide whether to participate, and make an informed oral consent. The response rate during the whole research process was 79 percent. The questionnaires were of 10 to 20 minutes duration depending on the answers.

All surveys were completed within a two week time period on weekdays (63%) and weekends (37%). The research was undertaken at different times of the day so that 22 percent of all respondents completed the questionnaire in the morning (10.30am until 12.00pm), 38 percent during lunchtime or early afternoon (12.00pm until 2.30pm), and the remaining 40 percent in the afternoon (2.30pm until 5pm). Completing the questionnaires at different times of the day and on weekdays and weekends ensured a good cross-section of visitors. Near the end of the interviewing period visitors were approached more selectively in order to obtain a good representation of types of family visitors.

42 While conducting the visitor surveys at the three attractions, the researcher also informally observed family visitors during breaks between interviews. As the research questions of this thesis are also concerned with what families do, observing them seemed to be useful as a supplementary research technique. Observation enabled the researcher to add to the richness of the research data by recording, describing, and analysing people‟s behaviour (Saunders et al., 2007). The aim of the observation was to assess the characteristics of domestic family visitors to New Zealand visitor attractions like the family group composition and the age of family members. Furthermore, the observation also added insight into the experience of domestic families attending New Zealand visitor attractions, in light of their activities and behaviours. The researcher chose to adopt the role of the complete observer who did not take part in activities of the observed people and did not reveal the purpose of the activity to those who were observed. This seemed to be an important point for the research, because people may have acted differently from normal knowing they were observed which may have resulted in misleading findings and results. For ethical reasons, no one observed in this way has been identified or is identifiable.

In terms of the way observation took place, the researcher generally tried to follow a particular family group through the attraction for a certain time, standing near enough to see and hear their activities and comments. Sometimes, the researcher also stationed herself for an extended period at a specific exhibit or popular place of interest, observing groups flow past. The researcher observed the interactions within the family groups, and their interest in various exhibits (for example, how long they spent at an exhibit, whether they read the information panels, the reaction of family group members to the exhibits), as well as other activities at the attraction, including meals and play time, as well as the nature of the family interaction, both positive and negative (for example, disputes amongst family members). The researcher used a diary to note what happened or what was said at the time (Delbridge & Kirkpatrick, 1994). Recording at full length took place on the same day as the fieldwork in order not to forget valuable data. All obseration notes were only available to the principal researcher and the supervisors.

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