Continuing medical education conferences boost engagement among medical professionals in various disciplines. These events help you connect with your attendees, exchange ideas, advertise new services and bring new perspectives to the medical community. But how do you know if your conference was a success or a failure? Here are five of the best ways to collect feedback at continuing medical education conferences.
1. Interactive Polls
Interactive polls are a valuable way to measure feedback at your next event. You can place touch-screen tablets at various locations in the conference room, and guests can rank and rate your event with a swipe of a finger. Unlike other methods on this list, using tablets for feedback provides you with real-time insights about your attendees. You won't have to wait until your event is over to see what medical professionals think about your conference.
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2. Email Surveys
Email is one of the best ways to gather feedback after a medical conference. You can send a message to your attendees a day or two after the event has finished and ask them to fill out a short poll or a questionnaire within the body of the email. Generally, email surveys have a good response rate, especially if they don't take up too much of the recipient's time. One study suggests that email polls generate an average response rate of 25 percent, so you could have a decent sample size if your event was large enough.
3. Paper Surveys
New technology might have replaced the paper survey, but this data collection tool still boasts multiple benefits. It lets you measure feedback on the day of your medical conference, for example, so you won't have to waste time emailing every single guest. Your attendees can fill out a short survey at the end of your event and then submit their questionnaire when they have finished. Research suggests that paper surveys generate significantly higher response rates than online surveys. However, tabulating results from paper surveys will take longer than digital methods.
4. Social Listening
Social listening lets you gauge the collective opinion of medical professionals who have attended your conference. This feedback method involves tracking digital conversations on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to discover the consensus on the value of your event. Social listening can be more effective than surveys — where people give dishonest responses up to 50 percent of the time — and helps with production and innovation management, competitor analysis, influencer detection and customer relationship management.
5. Online Polls
Online polls are a fast, flexible way to collect information from your event attendees. Web-based surveys include a series of short questions — usually, multiple choice — that guests can answer in their own time frame. This type of data collection method provides you with real-time statistical results as soon as someone has completed the poll, and has a speedier response time than a traditional paper-based survey.
Utilizing feedback at your next medical conference provides you with insights into what attendees think about your event. Interactive polls, emails, paper surveys, social listening and online surveys are just some of the ways to measure feedback. Use the information gathered from these data collection methods to promote better decision-making and problem-solving at future events.
Emily is the head Content Creator. She enjoys communicating complex ideas in an easy-to-understand way.
