The Penn Stater Magazine

Your Chance to Weigh In

May 22, 2009 at 2:02 pm Tina Hay 1 comment

We’re in the middle of a survey of our readers (or, more accurately, a randomly selected sample of them) to gauge their impressions of the magazine, what they’re interested in reading, and related questions.

We sent what’s called an “e-mail blast” on Wednesday to a group of Alumni Association members chosen at random from our alumni database, asking them to click on a link to take them to an online survey. If you received an e-mail that looks like the one here, I hope you’ll fill out the survey.

We do a smaller-scale survey after every issue of the magazine—we’ve been doing that for 12 years now—and while that gives us good anecdotal information about what readers think about specific covers and feature stories, the sample size is pretty small. The big survey we’re doing right now should produce a sample size big enough to yield very solid results.

We’re doing the survey in conjunction with our national professional association, called the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, who has in turn contracted with a vendor called Qualtrics Inc. We’ll not only get detailed results about The Penn Stater but also be able to see how we compare to alumni magazines from other schools. And best of all, it costs us nothing—CASE is doing the survey project as a service to our members.

So, again, if you received an e-mail about the survey (it should have arrived Wednesday afternoon), I hope you’ll take the time to complete it. If you already have, that’s wonderful. And if you weren’t among the random sample that got tapped, but you still have something you want to tell us, by all means feel free to e-mail me anytime at tinahay@psu.edu.

Tina Hay, editor

Entry filed under: Alumni Association, The Penn Stater magazine. Tags: CASE, online surveys, Qualtrics, readership survey.