As part of our review of our member surveys, we wanted to update you on the purpose of the surveys you get from us, how we use the data and why we’d encourage you to take part.

The feedback you share helps us better understand our members and your experiences of working in the profession. It's valuable to us to hear about your expectations of us as your professional body and to gather key information we can use when lobbying and campaigning on your behalf.

Typically, we receive around a 10% response rate to all our surveys. We’d like to thank everyone who takes the time to complete a survey and share your feedback. It really makes a difference to the work we do as your association. We'd also like to encourage as many members as possible to complete the surveys you receive. The more members who complete the surveys, the more we can ensure the information we’ve available to us is representative of the membership.

There are several key surveys we send out each year to all members. In each one we provide information about its specific purpose and how we’ll use the data. We always try to be explicit in the survey introduction about who will have access to your responses and whether your responses are fully anonymous.

A summary of our key surveys:                                                                       

  • Annual member survey: this survey aims to help us understand what you expect from us and how you think we’re doing as your chosen membership organisation
  • Workforce mapping survey: we intend to review this survey this year and relaunch it as the economic state of the profession survey. The aim of this will be to inform us about your working practices and the income you earn from counselling related work
  • Mindometer: this survey changes each year and asks key topical questions that help our communications team respond to media enquiries
  • Understanding the diversity of our membership: our demographic survey ran for the first time in 2023 and specifically aimed to gather demographic information across the membership. This is to allow us a better understanding of how representative our membership is of the general population and identify any groups who may be underrepresented
  • Member sentiment survey: this is a three-item survey you receive shortly after you renew your membership. We use this as a sense check of how you feel about your membership.

As well as those listed above, if you attend any of our events or access other products and services, you may also receive short feedback surveys specific to those. These allow our teams to understand what you like or don’t like about our events, products and services. This feedback helps us to understand and what can be improved to enhance your experience as a member.

If you have questions about any of the surveys, please contact our team at datasurveys.group@bacp.co.uk