Protocol for the 2023 CERA Clerkship Director Survey.

Abstract

Introduction: CERA, the Council of Academic Family Medicine Educational Research Alliance, is a unique collaboration between multiple family medicine organizations to conduct omnibus surveys of distinct groups within family medicine. CERA's vision is to support excellence in family medicine educational research and improve research skills in family medicine. This paper describes the methods of the 2023 Clerkship Directory Survey and presents the demographic results of survey respondents.

Methods: CERA's call for proposals for the annual Clerkship Directory Survey opened from January 2023 to February 2023. Five topics were selected, and authors of the selected proposals had a mentor assigned to their project. The survey was sent to Clerkship Directors via SurveyMonkey (Momentive, Inc) on May 30, 2023 and responses were collected through June 30, 2023. χ² tests were used for descriptive analysis.

Results: The survey was initially sent to 179 potential respondents but after receiving updated clerkship information, the final pool size was 169 (163 United States, 16 Canada). Ninety-six clerkship directors completed the survey, with a response rate of 56.80% (96/169). The demographic data of potential clerkship director respondents were compared with the demographic data of actual respondents. There were no significant difference in demographic data including location, gender, race/ethnicity and underrepresented in medicine status.

Discussion: This paper describes the methods of the 2023 CERA Clerkship Directory Survey and shows that survey respondents are representative of clerkship directors. Authors of the five accepted survey topics are responsible for publishing their study findings.