Abstract
The measurement of art engagement, typically relies on narrow views of engagement, emphasizing attendance at fine arts institutions. Such approaches underestimate the variety of aesthetic participation and likely underrepresent groups who experience barriers to access or engage with aesthetics outside traditional art venues. The rise of digital modes of participation further challenges the adequacy of conventional assessments. To address these gaps, we developed the Assessment of Aesthetic Participation, a new survey that builds on the strengths of nationally administered National Endowment of the Arts surveys, and captures a broader spectrum of aesthetic behaviors, including everyday aesthetic activities, religious and heritage embedded practices, and digitally mediated engagement. To establish its utility for experimental research, we validated the Assessment of Aesthetic Participation against commonly used measures in empirical aesthetics—the Revised Aesthetic Fluency Scale and the Aesthetic Responsiveness Assessment. Results from a nationally representative U.S. sample (N=1501) replicate previously observed demographic trends related to age and education, while suggesting a more complex pattern for race and gender. An exploratory latent profile analysis suggested five distinct styles of engagement, differentiated by frequency and preferred activities: low participation by the Disengaged, intermediate but distinguishable patterns of the Spectator, the Fan, and the Enthusiast, and the highly engaged Aesthete. The Assessment of Aesthetic Participation offers a flexible, inclusive tool that addresses limits in existing measures of arts engagement, bridges the measurement needs of population-level and experimental researchers, and can advance future research on the benefits of aesthetic experiences.