Methodology and New Avenues for the 2025 CERA Clerkship Director Survey

CERA, the Council of Academic Family Medicine (CAFM) Educational Research Alliance, is a collaboration between four family medicine organizations that conduct omnibus surveys of different academic family medicine groups. This paper describes the methodology of the 2025 Clerkship Director (CD) Survey and demographic results of respondents.

Four topics for the annual CD survey were selected via peer review after a call for proposals in early 2025. The survey was sent to clerkship directors via email from June 3, 2025 to July 11, 2025. The demographics of the sampling frame vs sample were compared with χ² tests to determine if they were representative.

One hundred eighty surveys were sent out; after receiving updated clerkship information, the final 2025 pool size was 174 survey recipients (161 in the United States and 13 in Canada). Although there are 43 DO schools in the US, the CD list maintained by STFM lacks these CDs. One hundred CDs responded for a response rate of 57.47%. We compared demographic data of the sampling frame with the sample. There were no significant differences in location, gender, or race/ethnicity. There was a significant difference in underrepresented in medicine status and being a physician.

2025 CD Survey respondents are representative of CDs. Few CAFM organization members submit to this survey and DO schools have not historically been included so are not represented. Targeted outreach to DO schools to identify their CD is planned prior to the launch of the 2026 CD survey.