Vol. I/1: Spring/Summer 1998
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Diane Kisich
Vol. I/1: Spring/Summer 1998
Voice of the teen: what do teens say they need from the San Francisco Zoo?
Zoos and aquaria across the country are taking a closer look at the teen populations in their communities. Many institutions have established teen volunteer programs or activities for teen visitors. In developing these programs and activities, it is important to understand the needs of teen visitors and teen volunteers and how they rank these needs in order of importance. This is so the Zoo can plan strategically to meet these needs. Comparing the needs of teens with those of adults, especially parents and teachers, allows zoos to serve both groups effectively.
At the San Francisco Zoo, the Education Department has embarked on a study called ZooWEB (Zoo Worldwide Education for Biodiversity). ZooWEB is funded by the National Science Foundation, with matching funds from the San Francisco Foundation, George and Leanne Roberts, and the San Francisco Zoological Society. The impetus for the ZooWEB project came from the imbalance between the population demographics of the San Francisco Bay Area and the demographics of the visitors to the Zoo. San Francisco has a minority white population, but at the Zoo, about 80% of the visitors are white. It seemed that there was a vast audience in the population who was not attending the Zoo, and thus was not being exposed to the informal educational message of the Zoo.
The purpose of the ZooWEB project is to improve access to our informal education program by our underserved audiences. Questions to be answered include: Why don't these people come to the Zoo? What are the barriers that stop them from coming to the Zoo? What must the Zoo do to make sure that visiting the Zoo is rewarding, so that visitors will return again and again?
We also discovered that there are other underserved audiences besides the multicultural ones. Teens, seniors, people with special needs (i.e. physically challenged, learning disabled, etc..), teachers, professors, and researchers were also not coming to the Zoo, or using it in numbers we would expect or want to have. This paper will address the portion of the ZooWEB project dealing with teens and what the Zoo may do to encourage them to visit and use the Zoo's services.
The Education Department worked with Quality Research Consulting (QRC) to adapt a process known as Quality Function Deployment (QFD) for discovering the needs teens have at the Zoo. QFD is a well-known method used in the corporate sector by such companies as Honda, Hewlett-Packard and Disney for improving their products and services to better meet their customers' needs. Through QFD we are assessing the needs of Zoo visitors for our long range planning. This will provide guidance for the development of new approaches to better meet visitors' needs for interpretation and programming. One of the products of this process will be a handbook for other informal science institutions to use in their own long range planning.
FINDING OUT WHAT NEEDS TEENS HAVE AT THE ZOO
The first step in the process was just to talk to some teens. We used individual interviews and focus groups of teen visitors and volunteers. We also talked to parents and teachers in interviews and focus groups about what they thought teens needed at the Zoo. Out of these interviews came a large catalog of statements covering almost everything that teens could use, need, expect, or desire at the Zoo.
The next steps were to simplify all this information. First, we sorted all of the statements into categories with similar statements. Then, from the categories and a collaboration with our evaluation consultants at Quality Research, we selected a sample of statements that fairly represented the full range. There are too many needs to begin working on all at once, and some are more important to teens than others. We needed to know which needs are the most important because those are the ones the Zoo should attend to first.
To rank the importance of the statements, we put the sample of statements into a survey questionnaire and asked teens to rate the importance of each statement on a scale from 1 to 5. We did not just take the word of parents and experts as to what is important for the teens. We left it up entirely to the teens to rate the importance of the statements of need on the questionnaire.
Finally, we used a statistical procedure called factor analysis to group the needs and organize them into a hierarchy of primary and secondary needs. We then ranked the primary needs in order of their importance to the teens.
RESULTS OF THE SURVEY: WHO ARE OUR TEENS?
Our sample of 161 teen respondents was taken from three groups: 5.0% from our Zoo teen program alumni; 50.3% from our current zoo teen volunteers; and 44.7% from teens visiting the Zoo. The Zoo teen alumni were sampled at a reunion for our Nature Trail Program. The current Zoo teen volunteers were randomly sampled either by mail or on Zoo grounds. The survey of visiting teens was conducted by trained Zoo teen volunteers on Zoo grounds. We used teen interviewers because we believed respondents would provide us with more and better information if they were interviewed by a peer.
The data showed that the age range of our teens is from 12-18 years of age, with the 13 year olds being the largest group (see Table 1). The Zoo attracts an ethnically diverse group of teens. The distribution is fairly reflective of the population in the San Francisco Bay Area, except that Hispanic teens appear to be somewhat underrepresented, with Whites over represented at the Zoo (see Table 2).
The gender ratio was relatively equal with 53. 9% female and 46.1% male. The majority of the students 57.4% are residents of San Francisco and 89.4% of all the teens surveyed are United States natives (see Table 3).
WHAT ARE THE TEENS' NEEDS?
Factor analysis provided the importance ratings for the statements in the questionnaire and yielded five primary need categories (see Table 4). They are:
The first two primary needs are basic needs that teens expect to see at the Zoo. In a very real sense, they define the Zoo as a zoo. If these two needs are not met, it is likely that no teens would visit or volunteer at the institution at all. The third and fourth primary needs are intermediate needs that teens know about and expect to have. They increase the value of the Zoo experience and cause them to choose this Living Museum over other forms of entertainment and recreation. The fifth primary need is considered a higher level need. It is the "icing on the cake" because it adds extra value to the teens' experience over and above what they might expect to have. QFD research has shown that if these "surprise and delight" needs are met, customers (or visitors) are more inclined to use the product or return to the Zoo again and again.
WHAT ARE TEENS REALLY THINKING?
Each primary need listed below is defined by its secondary needs. Secondary needs are the statements that are direct quotations from the catalog of interviews and focus groups. They are not ideas that came from Zoo staff or consultants.
Primary Need 1: Provide a valued and meaningful role for the teens.
This is the most important primary need for the teens. It is a need unique to the teens and is not found in other ZooWEB groups. It shows that teens want to do real-life work and they want to avoid the old thinking that zoos are just for young children. Also, if they feel there is a meaningful role for them, teens can avoid criticism of their peers who may think it is "stupid" to work or volunteer at the Zoo. Following are the secondary needs that define the first primary need:
Primary Need 2: Be a respectful, caring place for both animals and people.
This primary need is almost equal in importance to teens as the first primary need. Both of the two primary needs constitute the "basic needs" of teens (see Table 4). It is interesting to note that this need is also identified as a primary need in the adult survey and is their first and most important primary need. Before this need was identified from our surveys, no one had stressed its importance to the Zoo visitors. Other needs that fall into the "surprise and delight" categories, to be discussed later, were thought to be more important to the visitors. The secondary needs defining the second primary need are:
Primary Need 3: Make science easy and interesting.
The third primary need is considered a mid-level need and of intermediate importance to teens. This need is defined by the following statements:
Primary Need 4: Provide for the special interests of teens.
This need is also considered to be a mid-level need. The fourth primary need seems like a miscellaneous collection of needs. However, we looked for an overall theme, and took into consideration some of the remarks teens made in the interviews to help define this primary need. We could see that a few carefully chosen features and amenities would make the Zoo a very desirable place for teens to visit. This fourth primary need is defined by the following:
Primary Need 5: Contribute to teen's science education and career preparation.
The fifth primary need is considered to be a higher level need in the "surprise and delight" category. It is the "surprise and delight" because it goes beyond what teens might expect to find at the Zoo. It therefore brings much greater value to the teens' Zoo experience. This need is similar to the adult need in which people want the Zoo to take an active role in the education and career preparation of teens. However, this need is much more basic and important for adults. For them, it is the second most important primary need. As we shall see below, there is a way to resolve this apparent conflict in adults' and teens' importance rating of this need. The following statements define the fifth primary need.
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
Now that we have defined what the primary teen needs are, we need to ensure that these needs are being met by the Zoo. But we must begin with the basic needs first. QFD research has shown that if one begins by addressing the "surprise and delight" needs without meeting the Basic Needs, you will create a very dissatisfied customer (or visitor in a zoo). An exception to this rule would be if you could offer a program that not only satisfies a basic need, but at the same time meets a "surprise and delight" need. It turns out that we have been able to create such a program at the San Francisco Zoo.
To begin addressing teen needs at the San Francisco Zoo, the Education Director created the position of Director of Youth Programs. First on the agenda was to increase the opportunity for teens to participate in interpretive programs, classes, clubs and committees at the Zoo. One of the new interpretive programs implemented this summer is called "Talk on the Wild Side!" A main component of this program, for teens 14 - 17 years old, is to interpret an African elephant target training session for zoo visitors. These elephant training sessions were part of the elephants' and the keepers' daily routine but were not open to the public. Target training is accomplished through positive interactions between an animal and a keeper with a poll called a target. Using food rewards to encourage the desired behavior the keeper will guide the elephant and elicit actions that will eventually lead to the goal behavior. An example of a goal would be drawing blood from the elephants ear, allowing routine health monitoring. In talking with the keepers, we came up with this collaborative program to interpret the daily target training routine. Teens are trained by the education staff and keepers to lead presentations about the target training method and explaining what the public is seeing the keepers and elephants do. Teens enjoy the access they have to the "experts" (keepers) who work with the animals. They also realize they play an important role in teaching Zoo visitors. Through this program, both the teens and Zoo visitors gain insight into the respectful and intense treatment and care given to the elephants. Both the teens and the Zoo visitors are excited to see keepers' concern for the elephants' health and welfare; therefore, they leave with a heightened sense that the animals are well treated and cared for. The adult public sees these young people involved in this responsible and important activity, learning new things about animal biology, and teaching these things to the public. They leave with a positive feeling about the things the Zoo is doing for the science education of teens.
The "Talk on the Wild Side! Program alone cannot satisfy all the teens' needs. However, it does address a number of their Primary Needs. 1) Provide a valued and meaningful role for the teens; 2) Be respectful and caring place for both animals and people; and 5) Contribute to teens' science education and career preparation (number 2 for adults). The primary needs we have described cannot be satisfied by a single program. People evaluate the Zoo as a whole on whether their needs are met, not just a single program or activity. The ultimate goal of ZooWEB is to make certain that every Educational program activity addresses one or more of the needs of both teens and adults.
Because Hispanics appear to be an underserved group in the teen population, we will address this problem as well. We have begun more intensive recruiting of Hispanic youth for our programs. We have been working with the Coalition for Immigrant Rights and the Mujeres Unidas y Activas to begin involving more Hispanic teens in our programs. One of the next steps is to assess the level to which teens feel their primary needs are being satisfied. This will require another survey.
The results of the ZooWEB study have proven to be very beneficial in directing the expansion and improvement of the San Francisco Zoo's Youth Programs. Some things to consider, if you are interested in using the QFD process to evaluate the needs of your institution: 1) The management of your institution must be willing to support the process and the results of the study; 2) QFD is a time consuming process which takes several months to complete and involves staff at all levels of your institution. Using the results of our study we have been able to create classes, volunteer programs, and a club to better meet these teen needs. The youth of today will make decisions for our planet tomorrow. Therefore, it is important they get involved in our institutions, so they develop a sensitivity to the environment and ways to protect it. In sharing this information it is the hope of the San Francisco Zoo's Education Department that other organizations will benefit from our findings and will be better able to provide for the needs of their youth.
REFERENCES
| Years | |
| 12 | 2.5% |
| 13 | 27.5% |
| 14 | 21.9% |
| 15 | 18.8% |
| 16 | 16.3% |
| 17 | 12.5% |
| 18 | less than 1% |
| Zoo Teens | Bay Area Teens* | |
| Asian | 18.1% | 18.78% |
| African American | 10.3% | 11.44% |
| Hispanic | 12.3% | 21.19% |
| White | 43.9% | 38.89% |
| Other | 15.5% | 9.69% |
| Teens | Adults** | |
| United States Native | 89.4% | 68.8% |
| Immigrant | 10.6% | 31.2% |
| San Francisco Resident | 57.4% | 44.0% |
| Basic Needs | |
| 1 | Provide a valued and meaningful role for teens at the Zoo |
| 2 | Be a respectful, caring place for both animals and people |
| Mid-Level Needs | |
| 3 | Make science easy and interesting |
| 4 | Provide for the special interests of teens |
| Higher Level Needs | |
| 5 | Contribute to teens' science education and career preparation |
Minerva Online Vol. I/1: Spring/Summer 1998