Issues in Measuring Visitor Experiences: Refining the DoVE Adjective Checklist

The DoVE adjective checklist was developed to capture multiple facets of the visitor experience in order to assist attractions such as museums, art galleries, science centers, zoos and aquariums to better understand and improve their core product – the visitor experience. This paper describes the comprehensive three-stage process used to refine the instrument, including user feedback, pilot testing, and comparison of different formats, culminating in the presentation of a new revised version covering seventeen dimensions of visitor experience. A review of the visitor studies and broader psychology literature underpinning these seventeen dimensions reveals the rich and diverse range of experiences available to visitors. A number of methodological and practical issues identified in the process of refining and testing the instrument are discussed, offering insights for other researchers in visitor studies contexts. The revised checklist (included as an Appendix) uses phrases rather than single words in order to provide better context, covers a wider range of dimensions, and allows users to select dimensions that are tailored to their specific needs and purposes. The instrument can be used in academic research, as well as contributing to benchmarking between or within sites, and evaluations designed to improve the visitor experience.