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espondents are conscious; 2) there is limited comparability across events and
locations (ie, the programmes being assessed are different, as are the participants
and community contexts); 3) surveys immediately following events fail to capture
effects that unfold over time.
The primary focus of the literature on post-event survey research has been developing
tools to assist arts and cultural organisations in gathering high quality
audience feedback for internal accountability purposes. The larger question of the
role of post-event survey data in assessing public sector policy is not addressed
in the literature, except in the work of Chappell and Knell (2012) and Bunting
and Knell (2014). If anything, the literature raises questions as to the plausibility
of aggregating survey data across organisations and artforms, due to the highly
personal and situational nature of impact, and because of differences across the
forms themselves (Belfiore and Bennett 2007). Additional research and debate is
required to better understand how and when it is meaningful to aggregate self-reported
participant impact data across organisations and artforms.
Qualitative post-event research
Qualitative methods have the advantage that they allow informants to focus their
reflections on the areas that are most significant to them. Rather than defining
constructs in advance, researchers can allow interviewees to express themselves
in their own terms and subsequently derive the most relevant categories of
responses inductively (Radbourne 2009, 2010a, Walmsley 2013). Thus, Foreman-
Wernet and Dervin (2013) found that their informants discussed negative or
mixed responses, which might not have come to light in quantitative surveys. As
with formal surveying, however, qualitative methods of inquiry can only capture
aspects of an experience of which respondents are aware and that they are able to
articulate.
Whereas survey methods can be expected to yield consistent results over time
and thus generate a stable basis of knowledge, the results of qualitative studies
are not replicable, independently verifiable, or refutable. Since the conclusions
drawn by one qualitative study are not disproven by contradictory findings in
another, there is no inherent mechanism that weeds out research that is of substandard
quality. One must therefore assess the integrity of each study by paying
close attention to the research design and methodology, which can be challenging
for lay readers. Nonetheless, several researchers have stressed the important role
qualitative studies play in contextualising numerical data (O’Brien 2010, Klamer
2004, Holden 2006). Narrative accounts can tell us why people value cultural experiences
and what those experiences mean to them, rather than just measuring
to what extent they were affected. With the advent of more sophisticated textual
Executive Summary 13
UNDERSTANDING the value and impacts of cultural experiences