The membership survey results are in!

News and Views

Jen Brammer
Membership Engagement Manager, The Physiological Society

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https://doi.org/10.36866/pn.107.12

Conducted biennially, the recent Membership Survey provided an opportunity for you to share your views on The Society, what it is doing well, what we need to improve, and what is important to you. These results directly feed into our strategic and operational planning, to ensure The Society and the support we offer our members remains current.

We will share an executive summary of the responses with all Members, but until then here are some highlights.

Approximately 13% of Members responded, which is less than anticipated, but this still provides really useful data as those who replied provided a real insight into the feeling and needs of the membership.

Membership

Members were asked to indicate the benefits they most value, providing insight into the reasons why people join, but also why they remain. World-class scientific meetings ranked highest with 63% of the votes, opportunities to present research came second with 52% and networking opportunities closely behind in third with 51%. Career development and mentoring were key opportunities that respondents said would add more value to membership.

Support for Affiliate members was highlighted as an area where progress has been made, with respondents favourable of initiatives introduced so far. There were also a lot of new ideas suggested as well, which will feed into the work of the Affiliate Working Group.

Policy

Respondents were asked to select their top three areas they felt The Society should focus on in its policy activities. The top three results reflect the current environment and key concerns for Members.

The results included research funding environment (79%), higher education policy (69%) and raising the profile of physiology amongst policymakers (47%). Members reported that they contribute to science policy debate through their institution or company.  Interestingly, 38% of respondents do not engage with policy debate.  The
Policy team of The Society are keen to reduce this figure.

Meetings & events

Respondents gave very positive reasons for attending The Society’s meetings and this reflects the efforts of our Event Managers who provide high-level engagement through top-quality programmes. Hearing about cutting-edge research ranked highest with 76%, opportunities to present was second with 65% and networking opportunities was third with 64%. For those organising their own scientific meetings, the results highlight an appetite for marketing and meeting planning support.

Education & outreach

Members value engaging the public with their research, with 67% carrying out activities involving the public. Engagement with schools and children was lower (31%) with a lack of support or resources to do this cited as barriers. Respondents suggested that partnership opportunities (45%) and personal development skills training (46%) were key areas where The Society could better support engagement activity.

Communications

Members are happy with the monthly newsletter with 46% saying they found it useful and the content pitched at the right level. 34% of respondents use social media to keep up to date with the latest published research, with 75% expecting to see the latest Physiology News in The Society’s social media content.  On the website, Members would be interested in more information about meetings and events, general research news and theme-focused news.

Physiology News

The content of the magazine was highly rated. ‘News in brief’ was most popular (85% responded good or very good). Reading the magazine in print remains the most popular choice of members (44%), with 27% opting for a combination of in print and online.

Equality & diversity

The Society’s commitment to strengthening practices in diversity, quality and inclusion has made great progress since the signing of the declaration in October 2014. Awareness of goals was slightly lower than expected, but 60% of respondents support The Society’s goals and most respondents knew about specific activities.

Overall, the results of the survey are very positive; members are supportive of the work being carried out by The Society and the Member-focused activities we deliver. We would like to extend our thanks to all the members who took the time to complete the survey and we will continue to report specific actions arising from this survey as they are implemented.

An executive summary will be made available to all members on The Society website.Anyone wishing to discuss the survey and the results further, can contact Jen Brammer, Membership Engagement Manager, at jbrammer@physoc.org

Raise The Society’s profile and support your colleagues with membership!

As a Member, there are several ways to engage with us and our activities and to help you make the most of your membership. One way is to become a Society Representative (Rep). Our growing network of 94 UK and overseas Society Reps work with us to promote The Society, membership, and access Rep-only grant schemes.

As a Rep you can apply for funds, as part of the Departmental Seminar Scheme, to support travel and accommodation costs associated with attracting visiting speakers to departments.

You are also able to nominate a student for the Undergraduate Prize in Physiology, recognising your institution’s best BSc physiology research project or an outstanding MSc student who has performed well throughout their degree.

We can provide support for open and induction events, by either arranging for someone representing The Society to attend or providing marketing material.

Reps also have the chance to attend operational and best practice focused meetings, organised by The Society, to support their role and enable networking with Reps based in other regions.

All Members can view a list of current Reps via the membership directory, https://portal.physoc.org/MembershipDirectory, and filtering by Committee on Society Representative.

Interested in finding out more? Read more about the role of Reps at www.physoc.org/what-do-society-reps- do or get in touch with Jen Brammer, Membership Engagement Manager, at jbrammer@physoc.org

Help us reach our aim of having a Rep for every institution and organisation where we have members!