Exploring strategies and tools to improve survey response rates among medical students at the College of Medicine, Hail University, Saudi Arabia

BACKGROUND: Surveys are being increasingly used to evaluate the courses in the academic programs. However, it may be challenging to achieve high response rates in surveys administered to medical students, and that is due to several factors, including the length of the survey, concerns about confidentiality, and the lack of incentives for completion, in addition to the high level of stress among medical students. This paper aims to evaluate some strategies to address low response rates in the course evaluation survey that can be applied to other surveys to achieve strong response rates among medical students. METHODS: Cross-sectional study was conducted in the College of Medicine’s Quality and Development Department, participants were selected through simple random sampling, structured questionnaires were used for data collection, dependent t -test was applied to determine the significance for different response rates among study participants. A P value < 0.005 was considered significant. RESULTS: The results of the study show a significant improvement in the mean scores of various courses from the 2022–23 academic year to the 2023–24 academic year. The overall mean score increased from 19.0 ± 4.4 in the previous year to 25.3 ± 7.2 in the 2023–24 year, with a P value of 0.01, indicating statistical significance. CONCLUSIONS: In conclusion, there was a significant improvement in student performance across most medical courses from the previous academic year to the current one.