Introduction

The British Veterinary Association (BVA) is the national representative body for the veterinary profession with over 11,000 members.

Feedback obtained from a membership survey undertaken by AHC showed that the BVA's publications were the membership benefit most valued by BVA members. However, it was also clear that certain publications were more valued than others by the membership. In addition, advertising revenue obtained from the publications was in decline.

The BVA therefore asked AHC to support it in a review of its publications to establish how they could be further developed and improved to meet the needs of the BVA membership, and also to establish actions to address the decline in advertising revenue.

Our Approach

We developed an online questionnaire to gather feedback from the BVA membership. The survey asked BVA members for their feedback in areas such as:

	Reading patterns for each publication
	The content and relevance of the various sections within each publication
	The design/layout of each publication
	Feedback on other journals read by members
	Members future information requirements from publications
	Feedback on the BVA Publications website

In addition to the membership survey, we also obtained feedback from various BVA staff members so that we were able compare internal and external perceptions of the effectiveness of BVA's publications.

The Results

Over 6000 members were e-mailed and invited to participate in the survey, with over 1200 members completing the questionnaire. This gave an excellent response rate of over 20% of those invited to take part.

The feedback firstly indicated that there was an overlap in content across the existing BVA publications, and this provided the opportunity for BVA to redefine the role of each journal and align them with the information requirements of their members.

We were also able to use the results to identify the key content that members were looking to receive in their publications and how often they wanted to receive it.

A major concern for BVA prior to the research was that providing members with the option not to receive hard copies of publications might have a significant impact on advertising revenues based on readership numbers. However, the results indicated that the vast majority of members still wanted to receive hard copies of publications, meaning that providing this option was viable.

Benefits to the BVA

	Improved reader satisfaction
	Better communication of information to address the varying interests of different membership groups
	Cost savings through the need to produce only 2 rather than 3 publications and outsourcing publications and advertising to a new provider
	Improved membership satisfaction through listening to members and acting on the findings of the research