For my final undergraduate research project with Dr. Lung, I spent the summer of 2020 conducting interviews with museum professionals across Iowa to develop a qualitative study of internship practices in the state. As a result of the research, we were able to develop a list of best practices for museum internships.

Goals

Building upon quantitative data gathered during our 2019-20 Salary Survey, the goal of this research was to provide insight into the museum internship economy in Iowa. During the project, we sought to explore themes including access and opportunities; how pay (or lack of) influences the internship; and the relationship of the internship to future professional experience. We additionally wanted to consider what employers are looking for and expecting from museum interns. More broadly, we were looking to understand how interns become museum staff--analyzing the transition from intern to employee and how or if the museum field is unique in this area. This research aimed to assist students, emerging professionals, and museum staff in better understanding the internship experience.

Methods

As qualitative research, this project was centered around conducting interviews with museum professionals. First, we identified potential interviewees from a wide range of locations, institutions, and backgrounds. After contacting those museum people, obtaining their permission to participate in the research, and scheduling the interviews, we worked on developing the interview questions. The questions were designed to be open-ended so as to give the participants freedom to talk about their professional experiences; however, we made the questions universal enough to ask the same of every interviewee for comparable data.

With eight solid interview questions, our research team interviewed four professionals who work closely with interns at their museums. The interviews lasted about 45 minutes each and were recorded. I transcribed each interview so the quotes could be pulled directly since the information given in the interviews was the data which would support our findings. I pulled common themes from the transcripts and organized quotes under eight main topics of high-impact internships as taken from previous research. After compiling our qualitative data in a spreadsheet, I created a PowerPoint (seen below) to consolidate the data and draw conclusions. The major result of the data was a revised list of high-impact internship practices, directed at institutions that are seeking to provide impactful internships. This information is also useful for internship program directors at educational institutions who match students with institutions and for interns who are looking for an enlightening internship experience.

Reflection

This summer’s qualitative research project was a valuable experience to add to my research portfolio. It was a refreshing shift in project approach and definitely a way to stretch myself. The change of pace from looking at survey results, creating graphs, and trying to analyze what numbers represented in real applications was welcome. It was insightful to step back from the numbers and learn how things actually play out in museums. Often times description is more realistic than trying to piece together what’s happening from numerical data. I found that to be the case with our research. It was really great to talk with people and listen to their diverse experiences, especially since I had prior internship experiences of my own. From a personal perspective, it was amazing to make connections in the field and hear directly from museum professionals what they’re looking for in interns and in job applications too.

Picking out trends in qualitative data was more of an intuitive process than a quantitative one. It was difficult to find exact quotes that represented interviewees’ similar ideas, but it was easy to see patterns in what interviewees were describing. This process of transcribing and digesting the information from the interviews was valuable in better understanding the qualitative data we had gathered. Putting that data into a presentation was difficult because often times graphs speak for themselves. Although I suppose quotes also speak for themselves in a way. What became challenging was when the quotes weren’t contextualized or coherent enough to get the point across. I would say the most difficult part of this entire research was balancing presenting the pure quoted information with presenting the interpreting information gleaned from the interviews. It is more of a blurred boundary between data and interpretation with qualitative work than with quantitative work.

Overall, this interview-based research project was very helpful in growing my skills as a researcher, and I believe the resulting presentation was very insightful to the field. It was a great way to build from the background quantitative data we had gathered on the field as a whole, and then talk to people about their experiences for more honest and realistic information about the field. Numbers definitely cannot tell the whole story; with numbers you have to make a lot of inferences and generalizations. But in talking to people, you get individual anecdotes and also common experiences of the field. In that way, this was an insightful and personally valuable project to work on.