Family groups are one of the largest visiting
groups in many museums in Western cultural
contexts (McManus 1994), and this is also the
case in China. Compared to school visiting
groups, which are another major component
of museum audiences, families that come to
science museums are likely to be more selfmotivated
and less structured (Tunnicliffe
2000). We defined our participants as adult visitors
who arrived with family members, and who
acknowledged themselves as Chinese or as having
a Chinese cultural heritage as their dominant
cultural identity. Visitors who had these
attributes were invited to participate in a
researcher-facilitated administration of the
questionnaire, by researchers who were themselves
Chinese nationals. A total of 603 visitors
were approached at the inside cafeteria, hallway,
and exhibition areas of the institutions. A total
of 503 visitors completed the questionnaire,
resulting in an acceptance rate of 83.4 percent of
all visitors who were invited to participate in the
study. The demographic information of participants
is shown in table 1