Membership Survey

The purpose of the Exciton Science Membership Survey is to provide the Centre with an understanding of the key factors required for its members to contribute at their best and be part of a positive, professional working environment.

The feedback has provided insights about how the Centre is successfully engaging with its members as well as how it could further improve to support them more. The Centre has now conducted the survey over two years, both in 2019 and 2020

This ‘repeat’ 2020 survey was kept similar to the earlier survey to allow a comparison of the results between the two years.

The survey assessed the following areas for feedback:

  1. Communication and Collaboration
  2. Communication Channels
  3. Professional Development and Training
  4. Culture, Diversity and Inclusion
  5. COVID (new to the 2020 Survey)

In 2020 a total of 48 respondents submitted feedback with a 34% representation from PhD students, 29% Postdocs and 10%, 17% and 4% from operational staff, CIs and PIs/AIs respectively.

These surveys have provided the Exciton Science leadership with a real opportunity to engage with our members and utilise the results to inform new initiatives for the Centre.

The survey has highlighted the strengths of the Centre as being Culture, Diversity and Inclusion and Communication and Collaboration with a bit of work still to be done in Professional Development and Training and our internal Communication Channels.

The overall experience of members of Exciton Science is very positive: 95% rating this as ‘Good’ or ‘Excellent’. In fact, 100% of members rated their experience as either Excellent (54%), Good (41%) or Average (5%). This is a strong statement of the level of engagement of members so far – even where areas have been highlighted for improvement, members enjoy being part of the Centre.

Additionally the results for the 2020 survey showed a general improvement across the Centre in between years, which reaffirms that the Centre is on the right track. We look forward to implementing some of the great suggestions from our members throughout 2021.

Selected comments from the 2020 survey:

  • Friendly, positive, and result-oriented environment encouraging collaboration within the Centre.
  • Top level ideas that are well communicated to the nodes and good support for cross-node collaboration
  • The research Centre structure helps to foster discussion amongst researchers both within and outside of their node which can helpfully lead to collaboration
  • As a Centre, it gathers outstanding research groups from different disciplines and combine them together as a whole unit, providing collaborations and opportunities beyond any individual node; also people can collaborate to try to solve some cutting-edge, really challenging problems which is definitely beyond the capability of any individual group.
  • We can keep working on creating a vibrant interactive Centre. Though this year has been challenging, we have done extremely well which is a big positive going forward.
  • Excellent and important research output. Encourages beneficial collaborations well. Great organisational team
  • The Centre very clearly communicates its stance on culture, diversity and inclusion, and appears to act upon these values
  • The openness of members to collaboration. The sense of community and common purpose. The support for new projects and ideas
  • Enhancing collaboration beyond what would be possible outside the Centre environment. Research excellence and a commitment to producing high-quality work.