Professional Membership Survey – December 2011

In December 2011 we conducted our Professional Membership Survey, to find out more about our professional members, the uptake of the services we currently provide, and interest in the services we could potentially provide in the future.
 
We would like to express our thanks to those of you who completed the survey. 
 

Overview of results

In total we received 613 responses; out of a total professional membership of around 1,700.
 
In terms of the professional membership profile of the respondents, 21% of respondents are GradStats, 77% are CStats (including MIS/FIS), 18% are CSci’s and 2% did not specify.  The majority of respondents (56%) indicated they had worked more than 20 years as a professional statistician, with 19% having between 11 and 20 years of professional experience, 10% between 6 and 10 years, 12% between 1 and 5 years and 2% less than 1 year.
 
The majority of respondents (83%) said they were employed or self-employed, with large numbers working in the academic (26%), pharmaceutical (14%) and government (13%) sectors.  About 27% of respondents work as a professional statistician abroad.
 
In terms of the current uptake of activities, the most popular activities were the attendance of local group meetings (28%) and section or study group meetings (26%); about 20% of respondents said they had used the online CPD recording system.
 
When asked about future activities, a majority of respondents (346 (56%)) indicated they would be interested in attending activities organised as part of a Professional Statisticians’ Forum, with seminars, workshops, training sessions and an online forum being the most popular format of activities. The top 3 topics were ‘Ethical issues encountered by practicing statisticians’, ‘Continuing professional development – how to make it effective’, and ‘The challenges of consultancy and how to make a success of it’; each with 185 or more members interested in attending.
 
A more detailed summary of the information collected can be downloaded. We would like to acknowledge the work of Anna Hart (with support from Lancaster University) in providing this summary.
 
The responses to the more open ended questions asking for comment and ideas are under analysis and will be published below as they become available:

The value of CStat

The value of GradStat