Pharmacy school survey standards revisited

In a series of 3 papers on survey practices published from 2008 to 2009, the editors of the American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education presented guidelines for reporting survey research, and these criteria are reflected in the Author Instructions provided on the Journal's Web site. This paper discusses the relevance of these criteria for publication of survey research regarding pharmacy colleges and schools. In addition, observations are offered about surveying of small "universes" like that comprised of US colleges and schools of pharmacy. The reason for revisiting this issue is the authors' concern that, despite the best of intentions, overly constraining publication standards might discourage research on US colleges and schools of pharmacy at a time when the interest in the growth of colleges and schools, curricular content, clinical education, competence at graduation, and other areas is historically high. In the best traditions of academia, the authors share these observations with the community of pharmacy educators in the hope that the publication standards for survey research about US pharmacy schools will encourage investigators to collect and disseminate valuable information.