In a rapidly growing field like neurology, products and devices are ever-changing.
A way to perfect those products and devices is through in-depth market research with the ones who hold all the answers: the neurology specialists themselves.
Surveying neurologists or neurosurgeons for product information can be tricky if it's not navigated properly.
Being in such a highly specialized (and often highly stressful) field of medicine, those in neurology won't have much time to take a survey the "normal" way.
That's where a third-party market research company can come in handy. For instance, our healthcare market research firm will help medical device companies get the neurology data they need, from professionals in this specific field.
In the post, we'll cover what questions to ask doctors in the field, how to handle the data, and much more.
Benefits of Surveying Neurology Specialists
Let's start with our favorite part--the benefits of conducting market research with doctors and physicians.
By conducting an online survey with neurologists, medical companies can:
- Fix existing issues with the product
- Increase sales due to backing from experts
- Improve marketing and advertising strategies
- Offer new healthcare branding ideas
Obtaining the information from these physicians has a whole host of pros for neurology products to succeed. That said, it's critical you work with a third-party research team to do this.
You'll never see us advocating for internal market research, but we really don't advocate for it when medical data is needed. The steps below will outline how a typical online survey project works.
💡 The Key Takeaway: Surveys for medical professionals result in data that can be used by healthcare brands for improved outreach strategies.
Recommended Reading: Measuring Appeal and Demand for New Healthcare Products
1. Understanding Your Objectives
The first step for any successful market research project.
A kickoff meeting is when you'll meet with your dedicated project team.
Say you've partnered up with Drive Research. A kickoff meeting will be a way for you to discuss your key goals and objectives with the team.
This not only lays the foundation for the entire project but also creates a good relationship between you and the team.
Generally, we advise that these meetings cover:
- Project expectations
- Review of the research process
- General overview of questions
- Overall project timeline
By covering these points early on in the project, you'll avoid unnecessary issues later on. For a full rundown of this, check out our post on items to cover in a market research kickoff meeting.
💡 The Key Takeaway: An important step in surveying neurologists is the project kickoff meeting. This is a way for the research team to go over priority areas of the process.
2. Writing the Survey for Neurologists
Surveys for medical professionals are only effective if they're written the right way, and this goes for any specialty.
Remember how we said that neurologists are busy and don't have time for a "normal" survey?
What we mean here is that the survey has to have the correct terminology and be succinct. This will make those in the neurology field more likely to take the survey.
Questions should be clear and not be repeated. For instance, if there are multiple questions about a similar sub-topic, then that will be compiled into one question to save time.
This brings us to our next point in crafting the survey: time!
Doctors of any kind are less likely to take a longer survey, so making it run over 10 minutes is a big no-no. Most often, the survey length in this case takes three to five minutes.
💡 The Key Takeaway: A survey written for those in the neurology field must be concise. The shorter and more to-the-point your survey is, the higher the chance of increased neurologist feedback.
3. Programming the Healthcare Survey
After the survey is written and ready to go, it will be taken from its original document and programmed into an online survey platform.
Believe it or not, even the smallest error in the programming process can have massive ramifications for survey results.
Programmers that don't follow a strict process during this step can end up making a small mistake that has a large ripple effect.
One of the benefits of working with a third-party team is that this technical step is handled by those who are deeply familiar with it.
In fact, research teams will typically have a programming checklist for surveys to ensure the appropriate steps are taken.
💡 The Key Takeaway: While programming provider survey questions, a list is used by the research team to ensure steps are followed in order.
4. Surveying Neurologists or Neurosurgeons
After the survey is programmed, we always recommend running a soft launch. A soft launch is like a "mini" version of the survey.
During a soft launch, the survey is sent out, but only to a small number of panel respondents. If there are errors within that survey, they'll only be seen by a tiny number of people, versus a larger portion of the panel.
Here are a few reasons why a survey should have a soft launch:
- Weeds out poor question design
- Catches typos
- Tests out the best email subject lines for the survey
Any issues discovered through this process can then be corrected before the survey is delivered to the full panel of neurologists.
Additionally, our firm has hundreds of partner panels to source from. We'll select the best option for your specific criteria, timeline, and budget.
💡 The Key Takeaway: Soft launching allows the survey to be sent out to a smaller pool of respondents. If there are any detectable errors, they can be sorted out prior to the survey being sent off to the entire panel.
Recommended Reading: 7 Reasons to Soft Launch Email Surveys Before Jumping In
5. Cleaning the Survey Data
After your physician survey questions have gotten useful data, that feedback has to be checked.
In market research, the data-cleaning process is one of the most important steps in a project.
This is when completes are carefully checked over for response inconsistencies. You'll soon find that much of the data cleaning relies on your respondents!
There are multiple warning signs to look out for when reviewing survey feedback.
Allow us to list out some of the biggest ones:
- Duplicate entries. Just as it sounds--this is when responses are doubled. It's a common error but can really throw off the data.
- Complete times. This covers surveys that were completed too quickly. Granted, complete times from neurologists will already be short, but it's still worth looking out for.
- Skipped questions. It's not abnormal for a question here and there to be skipped. But when a large number is skipped in a row, this is something that needs to be considered.
Cleaning is an essential step when your survey fieldwork is complete.
An outsourced team will spend time sifting through all responses to see if there are any suspicious inconsistencies.
💡 The Key Takeaway: Cleaning the data from the survey will weed out any insufficient responses.
6. Reporting Feedback from Neurologists
We made it to the final step!
Surveying neurologists doesn’t just end after the data is cleaned.
At this point, your healthcare brand will reconvene with the research team to review the neurologist survey findings.
This will include going over a detailed report, along with room for discussion about how to use the information.
We won't just hand off this information without recommendations, though.
With us, our research team will craft reasonable next steps for your company. If you're not familiar with market research, receiving this feedback can be daunting. Sure, it may be quality, but you need to know how to apply it.
That's why a solid team will meet with you in person (or via Zoom) to discuss the next steps in real time. This is also a great place to ask questions and share your own ideas.
💡 The Key Takeaway: A good wrap-up to any survey includes a debrief meeting with your market research team. This is especially important for brands that have received medical feedback from doctors.
Survey Neurologists With Drive Research
Gathering feedback from neurologists doesn't have to be overwhelming. With the right team, you can receive information that will help you develop products to assist patients in their medical journey.
Drive Research is a market research company based in New York. Our team is well-versed in handling medical research and can deliver quality data to help your brand.
Get in touch with us to learn more about our extensive list of proven market research services.
- 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.
