Receiving medically-backed insight for mental health services and products is an essential tool for relevant brands. With 1 in 5 Americans experiencing some form of mental illness, the need for related services is ever-growing.
But where does a mental wellness brand begin? Learning how to survey psychiatrists is a good starting point.
By surveying mental health practitioners, brands can gather high-quality, factual data from the pros. As a result, these brands can then incorporate this information into their outreach strategies.
This move is a fantastic way to measure the appeal and demand for new healthcare products, no matter the field.
In this post, our healthcare market research company shares how to create a survey for psychiatrists and everything in between.
Benefits of Conducting Market Research with Psychiatrists
So, we mentioned how getting medical feedback from mental healthcare doctors can help a brand's outreach strategy. But what do we mean by this?
Feedback from mental health professionals can...
- Enhance patient/consumer trust: When consumers trust a brand, especially a brand that targets mental health, this often creates a long relationship between the two.
- Create a better product: Medical-grade feedback creates medical-grade products! Sending out an online survey for doctors in the mental health field allows the product/service in question to be perfected.
- Improve marketing strategies: A word of advice for brands that use reviewed feedback from doctors: milk it! This can be used in marketing and advertising materials to attract buyers.
💡 The Key Takeaway: Gathering medical data from psychiatrists has the potential to massively boost a brand's marketing, audience, and product reach.
1. Kickoff Meeting
A kickoff meeting is essential to any project that targets doctors.
In this step, a market research team will meet with a brand to discuss the main project objectives. This is a great time for any questions and concerns to be answered and is a great start to the professional relationship.
Items to cover in a market research meeting vary based on the project.
That said, there are tried-and-true topics to always cover.
- Client expectations
- Questions to include in the survey
- General overview of the market research process
Kickoff meetings are important in market research and are essential for a good outcome.
💡 The Key Takeaway: Learning how to survey psychiatrists means first creating a solid relationship with your market research team.
2. Writing the Psychiatrists' Survey
Our number one tip for creating a medical survey for doctors? Keep it short!
And we mean short--it's key that the survey does not exceed 10 minutes. This is so that psychiatrists will be more apt to take it. Since they're busy treating patients, they don't have much time to spare for a survey.
For example, they would be far less likely to answer a 15-minute survey than a three-minute one.
While a three-minute survey sounds short, it can obtain all the necessary data--if it's written correctly.
Condense the information down to only the essential topics.
Medical survey questions should be succinct and clear and contain only the most important information to cut down on time. Check out our post on Common Survey Writing Mistakes to Avoid for more information.
💡 The Key Takeaway: Crafting the perfect questionnaire for mental health practitioners requires respect for their time. Making a survey short but meaningful draws in the best (and most) feedback.
3. Programming the Survey for Psychiatrists
The most technical step, programming a survey takes time and always has a set formula.
Once the survey is taken from its original document and placed into an online platform, the programmer begins the technical process.
It's essential this step is followed in order, and not back and forth.
In surveys, all the questions correlate with one another. So if a programmer works on one question and then goes back to a previous one to tweak something, this can cause a major ripple effect. In turn, this can throw off the entire survey.
💡 The Key Takeaway: A survey needs to be programmed in a very specific way. This is to prevent errors from happening down the line in the process.
Recommended Reading: Programming Checklist for Surveys
4. Surveying the Psychiatrists
Understanding how to create a survey for psychiatrists means understanding how the survey goes over with them.
But how could a brand possibly know how the survey will go until it's finished? Two words: soft launch.
Soft-launching a survey is when a smaller pool of respondents receives the survey instead of the entire panel. This weeds out errors before everyone sees the survey.
Here are a few key reasons to soft-launch email surveys before jumping in:
- Ensures questions are understood by respondents
- Gives a general idea as to how many responses a survey will receive
- Measures what initially attracts physicians to take the survey
Among others, the list above allows a brand to truly understand how well a survey will perform without sending it off all at once.
💡 The Key Takeaway: Soft-launching a survey is a great way to catch existing errors before it's seen by the entire panel. This creates a better outcome overall.
5. Cleaning the Survey Data
An often overlooked step when conducting market research with doctors and physicians.
Even if the survey for psychiatrists got a ton of feedback, none of it matters unless it's cleaned!
Survey data has to be scrubbed to yield any insight. To do this, programmers will follow a checklist of errors to watch out for.
These include:
- Faulty logic. If a respondent chooses conflicting answers, this is something to watch out for. This is often repeated more than once in a survey.
- Red herring questions. If a respondent chose incorrectly on a basic question (for example, they're asked to submit a specific answer and don't), this often implies they were rushing through to get the survey over with. More on red herring questions here.
- Skipped questions. A basic but very important factor to be aware of. When a respondent skips a question, this is another sign they didn't put thought into the survey.
Learning how to survey psychiatrists effectively requires an understanding of what to look out for.
Carefully reviewing the feedback is a surefire way to only obtain quality responses.
💡 The Key Takeaway: Survey data needs to be cleaned in order to be effective. Feedback full of errors doesn't help anyone!
6. Analyzing and Reporting Feedback from Psychiatrists
The last step of this equation is presenting the feedback to the brand in question and is the conclusion to the project.
Our online survey company will meet with the brand in a debrief meeting to discuss key findings and what they mean for the future of a mental health product or service.
Much like the kickoff meeting, this is a great time for the brand's team to ask any questions or raise concerns.
A polished report will also be presented to the team so they can reference the findings as they improve their strategy.
💡 The Key Takeaway: A doctors’ survey always ends with a debrief meeting and finalized market research report. This step wraps up the entire project and allows both teams to share insights.
Survey Psychiatrists with Drive Research
The only way to create an outstanding mental health service is with expert feedback. Surveying psychiatrists can provide the necessary information mental wellness brands need to be successful.
Drive Research is a market research company based in New York. Our team has a keen understanding of medical market research and can work with your brand to create a customized survey.
If you'd like to learn more about our market research services, reach out to us today.
- Message us on our website
- Email us at [email protected]
- Call us at 888-725-DATA
- Text us at 315-303-2040
Lark Allen
As a Content Marketing Specialist, Lark has a strong background and passion for creative, professional, and journalistic writing. She is also a self-proclaimed music freak and 90s enthusiast.
Learn more about Lark, here.
