Museum-based sleep education: development and evaluation of pop-up exhibits for children and families.

STUDY

OBJECTIVES

Museums are informal learning environments that attract people of all ages, but their potential for providing sleep education is underexplored. We developed interactive pop-up exhibits on sleep and investigated whether they effectively engaged museum visitors, improved sleep-related attitudes, and broadened perceptions of scientists.

METHODS

Activities were prototyped from 2016 to 2022, and then systematically evaluated across 11 events at a medium-sized museum. Pop-up exhibits included face-to-face interactions with sleep-research trainees, professional signage, video displays, visual icebreakers (inflatable dinosaur fitted to a CPAP mask), handouts (e.g. multilingual sleep tips, stickers, brain-shaped stress balls), and interactive activities to learn about polysomnography (magnetic "electrodes," 3D-printed brain). Museum staff conducted qualitative evaluations and recorded the frequency and duration of visitor interactions for sleep exhibits and comparison exhibits. A subset of adult visitors completed surveys to inform acceptability, efficacy, and perceptions of scientists.

RESULTS

A total of 1336 people visited the sleep exhibits (32% of total museum visitors), which significantly exceeded size- and location-matched comparison exhibits (12%). Visitors interacted for twice as long with the sleep exhibits relative to comparison exhibits. Survey respondents indicated that they would recommend the exhibit to a friend, that their prioritization of sleep increased, and that they intended to change their sleep habits. More than half of visitors reported scientists as being friendlier and/or more demographically diverse than they previously believed.

CONCLUSIONS

Pop-up museum exhibits show promise as a method to improve sleep prioritization and may have the potential to challenge stereotypes of scientists in local communities.