Enhancing participants' response rate in online medical educational surveys

Abstract

In the field of medical education, surveys remain one of the most common methods for the planned and conducted educational research. However, the validity of the obtained results depends on the adequate representation of the study population and the number of participants who have responded to the survey. An extensive search of all materials related to the topic was carried out in the PubMed search engine and a total of seven articles were selected based on the suitability with the current review objectives. Owing to the ongoing coronavirus disease-2019 pandemic, a sudden rise in the incidence of online educational surveys has been observed. There is an immense need to improve the response rates to the online surveys and thereby get representative results. In conclusion, online surveys are exceedingly being used in the field of medical education research by different stakeholders. It is the responsibility of the researcher to ensure that they follow simple steps to reduce both unit nonresponse and item nonresponse and thereby ensure more representation to the study findings.

Keywords

• covid-19
• educational research
• online
• surveys