SAB NewsLetter from the Director: The Science Advisory Board DistinctionPosted 4/15/2003 Dear Colleagues: Recently several members of The Science Advisory Board have inquired as to whether we are affiliated with any of the online surveys to which they've been invited to participate over the last several weeks. Since I have received many of these requests as well, I thought it would be helpful to explain how the studies conducted by The Science Advisory Board differ from those types of surveys and why we value the participation of our members. To begin with many of those other survey invitations are unsolicited and may not be relevant to your area of expertise and/or experience. In contrast, your notification of a Science Advisory Board-sponsored study contains a personal salutation. The studies we invite you to take part in are appropriate to your research area or direction of your work based upon the information you voluntarily provide in your member profile. Participants in those other surveys are often not pre-qualified and are consequently not the most relevant group of people to address the specialized subject matter. For Science Advisory Board studies, however, only members who are qualified to participate are invited to do so. We do not want your insights to be diluted by hoards of people with no experience in your field of research or medicine! Typically with those other surveys you have no idea as to who has sent you the invitation and have no point of contact if you have questions pertaining to the survey’s objectives. On the other hand, each study invitation you receive from The Science Advisory Board, come from Molly Scott, The Science Advisory Board’s Membership Coordinator, or myself. We always provide full contact information for any questions and/or comments you may have to share with us. While sponsors of those other surveys claim to be concerned with protecting your privacy, there always seems to be some type of loophole. Check out the following wording from a random invitation that I recently received: “By participating in this survey, you acknowledge that you agree to be contacted by selected vendors interested in alerting you to the latest products and services available.” We don’t want our members to be inundated by vendors trying to sell them something they are not interested in buying. We never reveal the contact information of our study participants. All of your responses are reported in aggregate to guarantee the highest degree of anonymity. Those other studies make promises of a chance to win a “big” prize. While we think drawings can be fun—we do them ourselves—only a few people benefit from them. Therefore, each and every time you participate in a Science Advisory Board study, you receive ViewPoints in your account redeemable for gifts in our online Rewards Catalog. Thank you for your continued loyalty to and participation on The Science Advisory Board—the only venue allowing you to express your opinions on line all the time about the technologies transforming science and medicine. And this accessibility is what makes us truly unique. We provide opportunities for our members to continue discussing study topics with their colleagues in our Perspectives, Instant Polls, Discussion Forums and other features on The Science Advisory Board’s website. Sincerely, Tamara Zemlo, Ph.D., MPH Director of The Science Advisory Board |
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