Your Participation Is Invited

Psychiatric News is conducting a readership survey this month, and I would like to ask you, our readers, to help us in this effort to make APA's newspaper as relevant and interesting as we can. I, along with the Psychiatric News staff, want to find out what you think of our current coverage and to learn how we can better shape our content to make the paper more valuable to you.

This will be the third survey we have conducted since I became editor of Psychiatric News. The results of those surveys indicated that readers were generally satisfied with Psychiatric News, and their responses to specific questions led us to make what we hope have been meaningful changes to the newspaper's content. For example, many readers said they were interested in more clinical and research news, and as a result we increased considerably our content in those areas. We plan similar adjustments based on the results of this year's survey.

The survey will involve two approaches: A questionnaire will be mailed to 1,000 randomly selected readers early this month. They will have the option of filling out the survey they receive in the mail or an identical online form; the letter accompanying the survey will provide instructions on how to access the online form. Members of the Board of Trustees and Assembly will also receive a mailed questionnaire. At the same time, readers for whom APA has e-mail addresses on file will receive a message inviting them to complete the online survey. That e-mail will include a hyperlink to the form. The random sample will permit us to have a statistically meaningful view of our readers' opinions, and the larger online sample will supplement that base of opinion with important additional information.

The survey is being conducted by an outside firm, so neither APA nor Psychiatric News staff will have access to individual survey responses or know respondents' identities. The survey is brief and will take only a few minutes to complete.

I would greatly appreciate your participation in this survey as we strive to further improve Psychiatric News. Your ideas on ways we can better meet your needs are important to us. After the survey data have been analyzed, I will report the results to you, which should occur early in 2005.