Hello Deborah

John H Falk is a member of ResearchGate and included in the papers on this subject are:

Falk, J. H., Moussouri, T., & Coulson, D. (1998). The effect of visitors ‘agendas on museum learning. Curator: The Museum Journal, 41(2), 107-120.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/229709911_The_Effect_of_Visitors__Agendas_on_Museum_Learning

Likewise:

Rennie, L. J., Feher, E., Dierking, L. D., & Falk, J. H. (2003). Toward an agenda for advancing research on science learning in out‐of‐school settings. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 40(2), 112-120.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/John_Falk/publications?sorting=newest&page=3

Have you also seen the following?:

The first item on the Royal Academy of Engineering website:

http://www.raeng.org.uk/search?q=personal+meaning+maps

Lindauer, M. (2005). What to ask and how to answer: a comparative analysis of methodologies and philosophies of summative exhibit evaluation. museum and society, 3(3), 137-152.

https://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/museumstudies/museumsociety/documents/volumes/lindauer.pdf

Best wishes

Mary

Article The Effect of Visitors ‘ Agendas on Museum Learning

I looked at the website for the Royal Academy of Engineering and my sense is that this is a subset of the more general process of having people generate Concept Maps. The most distinctive aspects of Personal Meaning Maps seem to be: 1) supplying one concept to be placed at the center of the map; 2) allowing participants to generate all of the remaining concepts on their own.

In contrast, the two most popular approaches in traditional Content Mapping are either to give a full set of concepts to the participants and ask them to arrange and connect those concepts into a map, or to let the participants generate and link all of the concepts in their map. Note that these two approaches do not assume that any particular topic will be placed at the center of the map.

Hi, I realise this may be too late but, if not, you could try Sara Elden's work on 'concentric circles of closeness', Jacqui Gabb's work on emotion maps, and Dawn Mannay's use of meaning maps as as part of her mixed-methods research. References:

Eldén, S. (2013) Inviting the messy: drawing methods and ‘children’s voices’.

Childhood 20(1) 66–81.

Gabb, J. (2010) Home truths: ethical issues in family research. Qualitative Research

10(4) 461–78.

Mannay, D. (2010) Making the familiar strange: can visual research methods

render the familiar setting more perceptible? Qualitative Research 10(1) 91–111.

You may find more useful literature through the bibliographies of these articles.