Results of the questionnaire on the EPPO Reporting Service
In September 2015, an online questionnaire was launched to get more information on who the readers of the EPPO Reporting Service are, and to improve this information service (RS 2015/156). This was the first time that a questionnaire on the EPPO Reporting Service was sent out, and the EPPO Secretariat takes this opportunity to thank all the respondents who have taken the time to send their opinion. The main results of this questionnaire are summarized below.
A response rate of 10%: a link to the questionnaire was sent to approximately 3800 email addresses and responses were sent by 384 readers.
Readers are mainly from NPPOs (37%), but not only. Research institutes, universities, and ministries of agriculture (32%), agrochemical companies (4%) and international organizations (4%) are also represented.
Readers are largely based in EPPO member countries but all continents are represented (answers were received from 70 countries and from all continents).
Both sections on ‘pest and diseases’ and ‘invasive plants’ are read. Most readers are interested by both sections (236). A rather large part of the respondents mainly read the pests and disease section (141), and only a small number of readers (7) are only interested in the invasive plants section.
Readers are generally quite satisfied with the EPPO Reporting Service
 |  |
Overall satisfaction with the contents (score 3.5). No dissatisfication expressed. | Overall satisfaction with the format (score 3.4). 5 persons were dissatisfied. |
The overall score within brackets was obtained by giving the following scores to the 4 categories below and calculating the average score. 1 Very dissatisfied - 2 Dissatisfied - 3 Satisfied - 4 Very satisfied | |
Suggestions for further improvements
Although readers are generally satisfied with the EPPO Reporting Service, a number of useful suggestions and remarks have been made. These have been discussed at the EPPO Panel on Information in Plant Protection and the following changes were decided.
- Use PDF format or links to send the EPPO Reporting Service: from now on the EPPO Reporting Service will be sent as a PDF (no longer in a Word format) together with a link to the EPPO website where all issues are stored.
- Provide a better ordering and separation of the different articles: in the contents of the EPPO Reporting Service, separations are being inserted to make a distinction between general topics, pests, diseases, invasive alien plants.
- Include more links to documents used as sources: the EPPO Secretariat will try to include more links to papers when these are freely available online.
- Include pest pictures: as for technical reasons (file size) it is not possible for the moment to include pictures in the text itself, but links will be made to the EPPO Global Database whenever pictures are available in this database.
Once again, many thanks to all readers who have participated in this questionnaire!
Sources
EPPO Secretariat (2015-12).