How to Participate

We are now taking subscriptions for the 2012-2013 data collection. If you are interested in joining the scheme please either download for subscription form or email your details to Gill Trigg (g.s.trigg@keele.ac.uk) who will send you the appropriate information and forms to complete. 

Questionnaire(s) will be sent out electronically once your completed subscription form has been received. The questionnaires themselves are user-friendly and have been significantly streamlined and simplified for this year.  They include full guidance notes and error checking tools in place to help the user, and help is available from the Keele team during working hours for further assistance during every stage of the process.

Completed questionnaires are returned to Keele at the end of June, at which point a 'data checking exercise' is undertaken to help ensure that data is clean, accurate and error free.

The first draft of the report is returned to participants within a fortnight of the questionnaire submission deadline, giving you instant access to some usable information.

Once all data has been received and finalised, the data is processed at Keele, and the specialist panel - made up of clinicians from the relevant discipline - meet to discuss the data. They then write a commentary on the findings, providing clinical interpretation of the data which is included in the final report.

In November a generic report is then sent to each participant, together with a separate suite of analysis tools enabling them to drill down into the data further and create their own charts and tables. These have been greatly enhanced and extended for 2013, offering a range of one-click layouts to enable beginner-level and advanced users alike a simple way to access the data they require.  There is a separate report for each Pathology discipline, each of which has its own speciality panel.

At the end of the process participants are invited to a user group meeting in Birmingham, where the findings of the report are discussed, and the participants get the opportunity to influence future development of the programme, discuss the data, network with colleagues, and input their ideas for the following year.

The annual timetable is as follows:

  1. February/March - recruitment to the scheme
  2. April - questionnaires are made available to participants
  3. June - the deadline for return of the questionnaires
  4. July – first draft of the report made available, data checking exercise takes place
  5. August/September – Keele data cleaning and specialty panel report review
  6. November - reports circulated to participants
  7. December - user group meeting held

For further information, please visit our new Benchmarking “Frequently Asked Questions” page

Subscription Form Download

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Keele University Benchmarking Service 2012/13 Data Collection Subscription Form