Opinion leadership and interest in emergency medical information : a case study

Opinions were solicited during the summer of 1978 by means of a mail opinion survey, A sample of recipients of the newsletter as chosen by an interval sampling procedure using the mailing list for the newsletter. A 60 per cent completion rate was achieved.

It was found that opinion leaders tended to read more newsletters than non-opinion leaders, and that they were only slightly more interested in the content. Significantly more males than females in the sample were opinion leaders. Other demographic data did not correlate highly with opinion leadership, which was determined by including six opinion leader self-designation questions on the questionnaire.

The only significant difference between readers and non-readers was that readers had more of a tendency to be involved in some field of medicine than non-readers. Respondents involved in emergency medicine tended to read more newsletters than those involved in other fields. but they were equally as interested as respondents involved in any field of medicine. There were no other significant demographic differences between readers and non-readers.

It was recommended that editors of newsletters and specialized publications use the six opinion leader self-designation questions as part of an annual readership questionnaire mailed to recipients of their publication. By mailing their publications to opinion leaders with an interest in the content of their publication, editors will get wider dissemination of content information than if they mail their publications to persons they think ought to receive it.