Surveys. They conjure up a myriad of images in our minds. Unwanted phone calls during dinner, being accosted by strangers in the mall "for just a few minutes," unopened mail asking for our opinions and input.
We at Emory Report decided to become one of the many asking your opinion. Not that surveys are anything new for us. We scour the campus for profile ideas, we attend every meeting on campus that we can get to. We call contacts regularly. Each week we poll five "people on the street" about current events, hot campus topics and seasonal questions in our "Voices of Emory" column. We interview speakers, researchers and administrators so we can cover stories that affect all of us. We are constantly asking people what they think, but only once in a while do we get the chance to stop and say, "How well are we doing?"
So in November, we sent out 2,000 surveys to members of the Emory community, both University and Emory Hospital. And 483 of you responded. You told us what you like, what you don't like, what you read, what you believe, and what you think about how well we do our job. We hovered around the stacks of mail every day as the answers came in, ripping open the surveys, anxious to know what people really thought of us. Some of the answers surprised us. Some did not. And as the old story goes, opinions are not something that are in short supply.
When asked where they get their information about University news, 80 percent listed Emory Report; the next highest sources of information, word of mouth and memos, were listed by 67 percent of respondents.
One of our goals with the changes in Emory Report over the last two years has been to enhance the sense of community within the University. We've tried to do that through the "First Person" column, where faculty and staff can speak out on topics and actually carry on conversations through the paper; through letters to the editor; through profiles of "behind-the-scenes" people around campus. We were pleased to see that 61 percent of respondents either agree or strongly agree that Emory Report creates a sense of community within the University.
We were also pleased to find that 88 percent of respondents either agree or strongly agree that Emory is a good place to work. And we found that number consistent across faculty, staff and administrators.
Answers to the question of what sections are read the most were no great surprise. We were pleased to hear that 67 percent of respondents always read the front page news, and 54 percent always read campus news. More than 50 percent of respondents answered "always read" or "occasionally read" for every section of the paper.
Distribution, we found, may be our biggest problem. Only 49 percent said they get Emory Report once a week. When we found that someone in our own office checked "every two weeks," we decided this may be as much a memory problem as a distribution problem. However, we will continue to try to refine our distribution system so that employees will consistently receive Emory Report each Monday.
All in all, the survey results pleased us. We will make some changes after what we've heard, but most of all, we'll keep on searching the campus for news. If you see us, stop us and let us know what you think. There's always room for one more opinion. We're listening.
--Nancy M. Spitler