Epidemiology Section Membership Survey

The Epidemiology Section conducted a web survey of current Section members during the months of September and October of 2010.  The purpose of the survey was to find out more about our Section members and to provide information that could be used to plan our future Section activities.  A Data Subcommittee of our Membership and Communications Committee analyzed the responses.  

All section members with working emails were sent an initial email and two follow-up invitations to participate in the survey.  The email invitations contained a link to the survey instrument.  A total of 2,411 current members were listed in APHA Epidemiology Current Membership Excel file as of 9/2010; 122 members had invalid emails and could not be reached, leaving 2,289 possible respondents.  There is a possibility that some responses represent duplicates, since the survey was anonymous and everyone received one initial and two follow-up requests. A total of 1,085 responses were received by Oct. 30, 2010 when the survey was closed. The final response rate was 47.4 percent, excluding those with returned e-mails.

Demographics of Survey Respondents

The largest group of respondents (26 percent) was 30-39 year olds, with over 20 percent in the following two age groups (20-29 yrs. and 50-59 yrs).  The majority of respondents (66.8 percent) were female. A little over 60 percent of respondents were “regular” APHA members and approximately 26 percent were student members.  The length of APHA membership ranged from new members (0 years) to those who had been members for 50 years, with a mean of 8.7 years (N=800 respondents).  The length of Epidemiology Section membership ranged from 0 to 50 years, with a mean of 7.1 years (N=795 respondents).

Employer Support

Section members were asked whether, if requested, their employer would pay for APHA membership and Annual Meeting attendance. 20.6 percent reported that their employer would pay for their membership, 15.4 percent said possibly and 47.1 percent indicated that their employer would not pay for membership. 21.8 percent of respondents reported that their current employer would pay for attendance at the annual meeting. Another 33.7 percent said possibly and only 29.6 percent indicated that their employer would not pay for attendance at the Annual Meeting.

Section Benefits

When asked to indicate their perception of the value of APHA membership benefits by rating specific benefits using a 4 point scale ranging from “not at all valuable” to “extremely valuable”, the three items where the largest proportion of respondents chose “extremely valuable” were access to AJPH (52.8 percent), professional networking (48.8 percent), and making presentations at Annual APHA meeting (45.3 percent).

Annual Meeting

Respondents were asked to describe how important specific factors were to them when deciding whether to attend the APHA Annual Meeting, by rating each factor using a 4 point scale ranging from “not at all important” to “extremely important”. The items where the largest proportion of respondents chose “extremely important” were being an author on a presentation/paper (52.4 percent) and employer pays for meeting attendance (49.6 percent).

Only 10.5 percent of respondents (104/991) indicated that, during the past five years, they had attended an Epidemiology Section Business Meeting at the APHA Annual Meeting.  And the majority (84.1 percent) of those who responded to the question about feeling welcome at the meeting (111/132) stated that they felt welcome by the leadership and Section members during these business sessions.  Only 12.1 percent of respondents (124/1029) stated that they attended the Epidemiology Section Social during the past five years. 

Why Renew?

Responses to open-ended questions regarding why members chose to renew their APHA membership and how APHA and the Epidemiology Section could encourage others to join have been analyzed and will be discussed during one of our Epidemiology Section Membership meetings at the Annual Meeting in D.C.  We hope that you will be able to attend our Section Membership Meeting to discuss the results of this survey and to provide us with your ideas about how to encourage greater participation in Section activities. 

Thank you to all who took the time to respond to the survey!