Helping the General Chiropractic Council improve its understanding of chiropractic professionals’ work, the impact the pandemic has had on practice, and future plans
GCC registrants eligible to take part
Responses from GCC registrants
%
Response rate achieved
Challenge
The General Chiropractic Council (GCC) is the regulator of the chiropractic profession in the United Kingdom, with a role to protect the health and safety of the public by ensuring high standards of practice. The GCC also approves and monitors programmes offered by education providers responsible for training chiropractors in the UK.
The GCC required up to date insight into the chiropractic profession to improve its understanding of professionals’ work and settings, qualifications, job satisfaction, responsibilities, clinical practice, future plans, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on practice, and levels of optimism and pessimism about the future of the profession.
Approach
The survey involved a census of chiropractors registered with the GCC. A questionnaire was co-designed by Enventure Research and the GCC and piloted with a small handful of registrants before fieldwork. The survey was administered online, with an invitation email sent to every GCC registrant, followed by three reminders for those who did not respond. An open access online survey was also available, which was promoted using the GCC website and social media channels.
A series of depth interviews was also undertaken following the survey to explore registrants’ perceptions, experiences, and opinions in greater detail. The interviews were stratified to include a mix of different backgrounds, age groups and location.
Outcome
In total, 3,384 GCC registrants were eligible to take part in the survey. Between 22 September and 27 October 2020, 968 chiropractic professionals completed the survey, a high response rate of 28.6%. Enventure Research undertook comprehensive analysis of the survey results and provided the GCC with a set of reports, which included a topline report, a full analytical report, an equality, diversity and inclusion monitoring report, and an infographic summary report. Enventure Research also presented the findings at a GCC council meeting.
The findings provided the GCC with valuable insight into workplace settings, qualifications, clinical practice, future plans, and optimism/pessimism about the future of the profession. In the survey, nine in ten chiropractic professionals said their clinical practice had changed as a result of the pandemic, with seeing fewer patients the most common change. The GCC will use the findings to inform improvements to regulation.
“Enventure Research have helped us keep our commitment to listening to residents and acting in their best interests. Regular resident surveys help us understand what residents think of their Council, the services it provides and its value for money. Enventure have made this process easy and efficient for us, and the survey is now an integral part of the way we listen to our residents and view our performance. We have full trust in Enventure and their professional process, and we look forward to working with them for the next iterations of our annual survey.”
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