Heart-Healthy Survey Practices
Posted by Jeffrey Henning on Wed, May 26, 2010
At the 2010
Vovici Vision conference, Neal Kovach and Paul Theriot of the
American College of Cardiology discussed the significant challenges they face conducting online surveys. Surveying doctors is hard enough, but surveying cardiologists requires a relentless focus on best practices with attention to the small details. As Neal said, "The only thing that cardiologists hate more than cigarettes is taking surveys." While online survey response rates for cardiologists are typically at 10%, ACC has been able to get response rates of 50-60%, by following these practices.
Survey Invitation Practices
“Invitations are key to the success of your effort. Play to your organization’s strengths and assets,” said Paul.
- Optimize scheduling based on past completions. Neal and Paul studied the time stamp data of past surveys to learn the habits of respondents. They learned that cardiologists typically completed surveys between 10 am and 2 pm Tuesday through Thursday. They now schedule their surveys for this window: “Strike at the best time, even if it means waiting.”
- Use influential senders to elevate the importance of invitations to surveys. Neal and Paul received permission to send out survey invitations under the name of the president of the College (they use the email campaign report to monitor for bounce backs). They have also sent surveys out under the CEO’s name.
- Use an image to reinforce the brand. ACC uses the logo of the American College of Cardiology Foundation. Graphics are great, keeping in mind one important warning: using too many images can lead your invitations to the Spam folders of recipients.
- Alter subject lines with each reminder to enhance participation. Rather than simply sending out each survey reminder with the same subject line as the initial invitation, Neal and Paul found that they got a higher response rate by tweaking the subject line.
- Personalize invitations. Not only do they personalize email invitations with a tailored salutation, they also provide the name and email of their personal contact within the ACC in regards to surveys. This provides better customer service to members.
Long-Term Health
Cardiologists themselves are about encouraging their patients to do what’s right for their long-term health. Similarly, Paul and Neal consider each survey in the context of the effect it will have on the long-term health of respondents’ experience with the ACC as well as their willingness to take future surveys.
- Make sure surveys can be completed in 10 minutes. Since response rates will suffer if surveys are too long, they work hard to keep questionnaires short. They diligently use skip patterns and advanced branching to route cardiologists around questions that don’t apply to them. Some of these are driven by filter questions, others by hidden fields: they often preload data behind the scenes, based on profile information they have about the cardiologists, their subspecialty and the size of their medical practice.
- Use end-page teasers to let them know about next month’s survey. The thank-you page of the survey also gives respondents advance notice about the upcoming survey topic.
- Look at panelist health scores. “Understand who is responding, how often, and how that compares with other areas of engagement.”
Panel Practices
Even after implementing all of these best practices, the ACC had a greater need to improve the feedback process and increase engagement. Their improvement goals included:
- Manage the increased desire for feedback (survey proliferation)
- Increase the falling response rates that were emerging from the “research callus”
- Neutralize the disproportionate level of engagement (missing feedback from key audiences, especially cardiologists running their own small businesses)
- Maintain a pulse on member attitudes and concerns and validate strategic initiatives and direction
- Increase revenue
As a result, the ACC made the decision to build CardioSurve, a monthly panel that is representative of the U.S. population of cardiologists. They randomly selected potential panelists from their membership, but stratified the sample so that panelist demographic data strongly reflected the ACC US membership base. Panelists who agreed to participate were asked to complete an Enrollment Profile that could be used for precise targeting of surveys, as well as to keep future surveys short. “Over a four month period of recruitment, we attained 350 panelists out of 1100 recruits. The panelists are loyal, with our average number of completes at 185 per month.”
What have been the results? “CardioSurve has resulted in fewer member touches/surveys, increased panel satisfaction, provided timely access to feedback and given us opportunities to showcase findings. Panel research results have been showcased in presidential presentations, meetings with legislators, professional magazines and journals, and have been used to guide strategy.”(If you have any questions about the CardioSurve panel, feel free to contact Paul Theriot at
.)
The next time you’re concerned about
improving response rates, remember that even cardiologists can be persuaded to take surveys, through diligent and professional application of "heart-healthy" survey best practices.