Report of the Committee on Long-Range Planning
for the Year Ending June 30, 2000

During 1998, the Committee on Long-Range Planning, through a series of meetings, developed a draft strategic plan for the Society in regard to Sigma Xi's program, membership, and chapter activities. Near the end of this process, the Committee reviewed the results of its efforts to prioritize membership and program activities and decided that wider input from the Society's membership on these activities would be extremely beneficial to the Committee's recommendations.

For the past two years, the Committee has worked with the Sigma Xi staff to obtain the views of the Society's membership on Sigma X's program and membership activities.

During the year ending 30 June 1999, the Committee gathered input from the membership on its interest in categories of program activities. Thus, on all annual dues notices for the year ending 30 June 1999, the staff included a membership profile that asked members some general questions about their areas of interest; 23,073 members completed the survey. When asked which general program areas were of most interest, members indicated the following (each was allowed to choose two):

• 51% Science/Engineering Education
• 40% Public Understanding of Science
• 33% Interdisciplinary Research
• 21% Science/Technology Policy
• 15% Ethics
• 13% International Issues in Science

A question exploring members' interest in establishing contacts and forming professional relationships with scientists from other countries received positive responses from 4% of the membership who were interested in providing funding for a postdoc from another country to 30% who were interested in establishing contacts with, or collaborating on, research projects with scientists from other countries.

During the year ending 30 June 2000, at the request of the Society's Committee on Long-Range Planning, the Sigma Xi staff developed an experimental e-mail survey of the membership to get a sense of member preferences about program areas that should be high priorities for the Society's chapters and the Society overall. The 20-question survey was distributed electronically to a random sample of one thousand Sigma Xi members. The sample was taken only from those members with e-mail addresses in the member records, which currently constitutes about 2/3 of the Society's members. The response rate was 43%. The following summarizes highlights from the survey:

• Participants were asked to prioritize general program areas and more specific categories of benefits and services. Most program areas were considered a high or top priority (4-5 on a 5 point scale) for Sigma Xi by at least 50% of the respondents; however when asked which single program area would be their highest priority for Sigma Xi, programs were ranked as follows: Public understanding of science (31%), K-12 education (16%), science policy (16%), undergraduate education (15%), ethics/honor in science (10%), international expansion (4%), no highest priority (8%).
• When asked to choose a single benefit or service that would be their highest priority, items were ranked as follows: Programs for younger members (35%), recognition and awards (13%), diversity programs (13%), career/leadership training (13%), American Scientist indexes/archives (12%), online discussions/conferences (4%), discount on professional resources (3%), personal benefits (2%), other (5%).

This survey proved the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of the approach and the staff is confident that the approach can be refined to demonstrate both more rigorous statistical validity (e.g., employing a hybrid mail and e-mail approach to sample the entire population of the Sigma Xi membership) as well as a higher response rate with follow-up correspondence.

Perhaps more importantly, this survey, and the one conducted in 1999, will have significant input into the Committee's final recommendations to Sigma Xi's Board of Directors.

The major changes in the Society's governance, approved by the 1998 Assembly of Delegates, became effective on 1 July 1999. As part of these changes, the Chairs of standing committees were no longer ex officio members of the Board of Directors. This, in turn, provided an opportunity for the Society to examine its committee structure for the first time in decades without having the committee structure impact the size of the Board of Directors. Thus, the Executive Committee, at its November 1999 meeting, charged the Committee with reviewing the Society's overall committee structure and with providing recommendations to the Board for changes, if any.  This task will proceed along with the committee's ongoing review of program priorities, about which the committee will convene this summer.

George Bugliarello, Chair
John Gibbons
Peggie Hollingsworth
William Little
Cathryn Manduca
Alan McGowan
John Moore
Robert Morgan
John Prados