All-Member Survey Included

In This Month's EXPLORER

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A comprehensive, all-member survey is enclosed in this issue of the EXPLORER, professionally crafted to garner members' opinions of a myriad of AAPG services and publications.

The 95-question survey should take 5-10 minutes to complete and mail; or, an Internet site is available for those who prefer to respond electronically.

AAPG President Dan Smith said the Executive Committee is hopeful for a large percentage of returns of the survey, as the association continues to improve and adjust products and services to meet the needs and desires of the membership.

"The survey is a sincere effort to gauge the effectiveness of AAPG and efficiencies of programs," Smith said. "We hope the membership takes an initiative to tell us what we are doing wrong -- and what we are doing right."

The survey is the result of a process that originated in 1997. As noted in this month's President's Column (see page 3 of the AAPG February EXPLORER), the scope of the proposed survey grew through the process and evolved from a focus on the BULLETIN to include a broad spectrum of AAPG activities.

The survey includes six open-ended questions, where members have an opportunity to comment beyond a range of scaled, empirical data.

Don Lewis, AAPG vice president in 2001-02, was named chairman of the ad hoc survey committee in August 2001. Committee members and the areas of representation are:

• Katherine Lee Avary -- Division of Professional Affairs.
• George Bole -- Committee on Committees.
• George Eynon -- International Regions Committee.
• Ron Grubbs -- Energy Minerals Division.
• William Harrison -- Division of Environmental Geosciences.
• Don Lewis (chairman) -- Executive Committee.
• John Lorenz -- Advisory Council, AAPG Editor.
• Dwight "Clint" Moore -- Advisory Council.

Lewis pointed out that the committee represented the major constituencies in AAPG.

"It's a fairly long survey," he said, "but the committee significantly reduced the multitude of things we wanted to ask the members."

The committee recognized that a statistical sampling would suffice mathematically, but felt strongly that giving every member an opportunity to respond would maximize interest and the usefulness of results.

The professional firm of Anderson Marketing Services Inc. was selected to conduct the survey after a bid process that included four companies. AMSI, of Tulsa, also has conducted several surveys for the Society of Exploration Geophysicists.

All replies are confidential and will be received, tallied and summarized by AMSI.

Members should mail their surveys to the AMSI address on the survey; or respond via the Internet, by going to http://www.amsiweb.com/aapg. To log in use aapg as the user name and ux29yb (both all lower case) as the password.

International members may find the Internet as a more efficient vehicle to make sure the opinions reach AMSI before the receipt deadline of April 11.

Initial results of the survey are expected to be released at the AAPG Annual Meeting, which starts May 11 in Salt Lake City.