Major BCMA survey coming in January

In January 2008 the BCMA will field a membership survey that seeks to assess its performance across the organization. The survey will also ask members how well their information needs are met and how satisfied they are with the Association as a whole. Member participation in all surveys is essential, and all members are encouraged to take the time to participate in the survey. Your input is critical for the BCMA Board and staff to get reliable information upon which to make decisions.  

Many of you will recall the BCMA’s annual member surveys that were conducted during the 1980s and 1990s. The information garnered always help­ed the Association to meet its ongoing mandate to serve members’ needs.
In more recent years, the BCMA’s approach to member surveys was on a more topic-specific basis. Since 2005 the BCMA has surveyed members 13 times, with responses from a total of 9657 members. Survey topics included governance, negotiations, expanding Club MD, rural issues, various policy issues, and the web site.

The 2008 membership survey will be conducted by Ipsos Reid, and therefore your responses will be anonymous. Those members who have told us they prefer to receive information by e-mail will be sent an e-mail with a link to an online survey to complete at their convenience. Others will be called on a random basis in sufficient numbers to deliver a statistically valid sample.

The BCMA Council on Public Af­fairs and Communications will work with staff at the BCMA and Ipsos Reid to ensure key topic areas are covered.

—Geraldine Vance, APR
Director, BCMA Communications

Geraldine Vance, APR,. Major BCMA survey coming in January. BCMJ, Vol. 49, No. 10, December, 2007, Page(s) 535 - News.



Above is the information needed to cite this article in your paper or presentation. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommends the following citation style, which is the now nearly universally accepted citation style for scientific papers:
Halpern SD, Ubel PA, Caplan AL, Marion DW, Palmer AM, Schiding JK, et al. Solid-organ transplantation in HIV-infected patients. N Engl J Med. 2002;347:284-7.

About the ICMJE and citation styles

The ICMJE is small group of editors of general medical journals who first met informally in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1978 to establish guidelines for the format of manuscripts submitted to their journals. The group became known as the Vancouver Group. Its requirements for manuscripts, including formats for bibliographic references developed by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), were first published in 1979. The Vancouver Group expanded and evolved into the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), which meets annually. The ICMJE created the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals to help authors and editors create and distribute accurate, clear, easily accessible reports of biomedical studies.

An alternate version of ICMJE style is to additionally list the month an issue number, but since most journals use continuous pagination, the shorter form provides sufficient information to locate the reference. The NLM now lists all authors.

BCMJ standard citation style is a slight modification of the ICMJE/NLM style, as follows:

  • Only the first three authors are listed, followed by "et al."
  • There is no period after the journal name.
  • Page numbers are not abbreviated.


For more information on the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, visit www.icmje.org

BCMJ Guidelines for Authors

Leave a Reply