Background
Over recent years, there has been a steady increase in questionnaires received by UK ENT specialists. The advent of electronic distribution has reduced the cost and made it easier to survey the ENT community. There is legitimate interest in establishing national practice and opinion in the specialty. There is also the lure of a relatively easy publication to adorn the CV of the researcher. The quality of design and implementation of research surveys varies. Too many fall below basic standards. Natural selection operates to some extent. The worst offenders gravitate to their rightful place – the recycle bin. But not before they have caused nuisance and annoyance. This can prejudice future, more worthy questionnaires, resulting in poor response rates. Low response rates have a negative impact on validity. There is now a quality control over survey requests, and these are vetted by a subspecialty representative on behalf of the relevant subspecialty council. The Survey Guardian on behalf of the ENT UK Executive, will check the recommendations from these representatives and decide to either accept or reject the request or to ask the author for further edits.
Survey fees
- ENT UK member - there will be a charge of £200 + VAT for the survey process, and you will be expected to report back to ENT UK afterwards (see below)
- Non-member – there will be a charge of £500 + VAT fee for survey process
ENT UK can include appropriate surveys and questionnaires in its fortnightly ENT UK newsletter, which goes out to a membership of more than 2,000 readers, constituting a large pool of expert opinion and experience within the ENT specialty. Analysis of the newsletter’s open and click rates demonstrates a much higher than average level of engagement from our members, when compared with industry norms across comparable sectors. However, please be aware that we cannot guarantee high levels of membership participation in any survey or questionnaire.
The guidelines
Identify a proper research question. It is essential to have a legitimate research question that is capable of being answered by the survey methodology. You must state clearly:
- What question you are trying to answer?
- Why it is important?
- What is known / not known already?
Broad categories of suitable questions include:
- What is the range of opinion and practice on x?
- What is the level of awareness amongst ENT Specialists on y?
- Rarely encountered conditions: e.g. pooling experience on paragangliomas
Ask nicely
If a research question is worth asking, it is worth asking properly. Bear in mind that, on current response rates, even if ENT UK accept your questionnaire, most of your potential respondents will not complete it. Unless you can engage their interest, and maintain their good will, for the duration of the questionnaire, your response rate will be poor and your results invalid. Short, focused questionnaires do better than long, rambling ones.
Choosing a title for your questionnaire
The title is crucial. Unless it raises interest, most will ignore everything beyond it. The title should, ideally, be the research question. It should be brief, to the point, and invite further investment of the respondent's time.
How long will it take to complete?
Be upfront about the length of time it will take to complete. Base this on pilot studies. Under ten seconds would be great. Half a minute is probably OK. Anything over a minute is a long time. Five minutes is an eternity, and highly unlikely to be completed without serious incentives.
Validity
All questionnaires must have been trialed locally with at least a dozen meaningful responses. The analysis of these responses should be used to inform potential for refinement of the research questions where applicable. Such reflection is to be included in the survey application. Questionnaires without local trial first with analysis as well as high level results will be rejected.
The checklist
The following checklist, whilst not guaranteeing acceptance, should help avoid the commonest errors resulting in rejection.
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Objectives must be clearly stated; are they precise and concise using only one or two sentences?
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Ask only appropriate questions:
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- Are your questions directly related to the stated objectives?
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- Is there one overall most important question that you would like answered?
(if so put it up on its own, at the beginning)
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All questions must be intelligible and unambiguous (no less than 12 questions)
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Are your questions being intelligible to your target audience?
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The survey must have been piloted before it’s proposed, and the results of the study must be sent to ENT UK.
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Question and response type must be appropriate:
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- Is there appropriate use of open or closed questions?
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- For closed questions: are the options being appropriate (yes, no / single best option from a list / a rating scale*)?
*Rating scales can be categorical (Likert scale) or continuous.
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Ensure respondents are not forced to answer categories that don't fit.
(A response category of "Other" or "Don't Know" is often useful in maintaining the engagement of your respondent, even though it may reduce the power of your analysis.)
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Is there a free text box at the end, for anything that the respondent feels is relevant and has not been covered?
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Have you thanked your respondents for completing the survey?
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Has the survey been trialed locally?
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Please send a test link to your survey to ENT UK via email. ENT UK will not review paper surveys.
What happens next?
If your survey is accepted by ENT UK, you will have the following obligations:
- ENT UK must be acknowledged in the reporting of the survey and the outputs of the survey notified to ENT UK within 12 months
- ENT UK will retain the right to publish the survey findings through their website using social media. Survey results will be anonymised prior to publishing on the ENT UK website.
- Any failure of an output within 12 months or lack of request for an extension will result in further requests from those individuals being declined.
For more information
For more information please contact entuk@entuk.org