Who uses EPNET and why?

By Patrick Langford

EPNET is a popular mailing list for Educational Psychologists (EPs) and other education professionals. Roughly 2,800 people are signed up to the service and it serves many purposes e.g. sharing materials, discussing ideas, etc. One important function the forum is participant recuitment. Many people (myself included) have disseminated a questionnaire asking for respondents or sent out requests for participants. But there has been little in the way of research about EPNET: what kinds of people are signed up, why, how do they use the information gathered from it. Given the prevalence of EPNET as a participant recruitment tool, asking these questions will hopefully give a better understanding of the samples one can draw from this mailing list. I therefore designed a questionnaire to explore these issues and received 314 responses. Below is a summary of some of the main findings, divided into quantitative and qualitative. All the data, code, and graphs can be found on the Open Science Framework project page here.

Descriptive statistics

There were 262 self-reported females in the sample and 42 self-reported males (with 10 participants not disclosing). Of those who responded, 188 were EP/Assistant EPs, 62 were Trainee EPs (TEPs)/other kind of student e.g. masters student, 30 were Senior EPs (SEPs)/ Principal EPs (PEPs), 16 were other kinds of psychologists e.g. Clinical Psychologist, 12 worked in schools e.g. SENCOs, and 5 were retired (with 1 not stating their role). 5 of the participants were 18 - 24 years old, 120 were 25 - 34, 85 were 35 - 44, 47 were 45 - 54, 32 were 55 - 64, 21 were 65 - 74, and 4 were 75-84.

Inferential statistics and graphs

The main areas I will focus on are: role and gender differences between reasons for using EPNET and how they used it (though there are many other questions that can be explored with the data). To explore these questions, I will look at the differences between groups for sending public emails and differences between groups on reasons for using EPNET.

With regards to role, EPs/Assistant EPs and PEPs/SEPs had a statistically significant higher median score for sending a public email (with a median of 'Once a year') compared with a median score of 'Never' for all other groups. Looking at gender, men had a statistically significant higher median score for sending a public email; the median response for women sending a public email was 'Never' and the median for men was 'Once a year'. However, this result should be interpreted with caution as there were far more women in the sample than men so the men's results are more susceptible to the influence of outliers. There were no statistically significant gender differences for sending a private email.

The next set of analyses focused on the differing reasons for using EPNET. Were respondents of different roles and genders more likely to use EPNET for certain reasons than others? After using the Holm-Bonferroni correction for multiple testing (which is less conservative than the Bonferroni correction) only two reasons differed significantly by role: advertising jobs/work experience and offering advice/answering questions. Looking at the expected versus observed values, EPs/Assistant EPs were more likely to advertise than expected and TEPs/ were more likely to offer advice than expected. After correcting for multiple testing, there were no gender differences between reasons for using EPNET.

Another potentially interesting question centred around whether there was a correlation between different reasons for using EPNET i.e. how likely a person was to select a reason given they also selected another one. Below is a graph of the correlation matrix representing the strength of the correlations. One might predict that certain reasons for using the forum may be likely to occur together e.g. discussing topics of interest and watching others discuss topics of interest. The Spearman's correlation is shown by the number and represented by the pie graph, with blue reflecting positive correlations and red negative correlations.

R.G.= Resource gathering. I.G.= Information gathering/getting advice. Prom.= Promoting materials/courses/content/research findings. Disc.= Discussing topics of interest. Watch= Watching others discuss topics of interest. Adv.= Advertising jobs/work experience.. Answ.= Offering advice/answering questions. Stu.= Advertising research studies. Jobs= Looking for jobs/experience

To see whether any of these correlations are statistically significant at the traditional 0.05 level, the correlation matrix can be combined with significance tests.

The only statistically significant result is the correlation between discussing topics of interest and offering advice/asking questions (which perhaps isn't surprising).

Qualitative data

The last question presented to participants was a chance for them to give any comments about EPNET. Of the 314 participants, 146 made some kind of comment. A word cloud of the most frequent words (including stem words) was created using NVivo 12:

However, this doesn't tell us much about the general ideas that were present and the context in which these words were said. To get a better understanding, the responses were analysed for key themes using grounded analysis. 136 participant's answers were thematically analysed according to 6 themes: Community, Valuable, Knowledge, Intimidating, Unprofessional, and Poor interface. There were 14 codings for the theme Community, 42 for Valuable, 41 for Knowledge, 42 for Intimidating, 23 for Unprofessional, and 18 for Poor interface. These can be broadly divided into positive statements about EPNET (Community, Valuable, and Knowledge) and negative statements (Intimidating, Unprofessional, and Poor interface).

For Community, all but one of the codes were positive affirmations about feeling a sense of connection with other EPs and how it helped them feel less lonely in their profession. The other coding was a belief that the service should only be for EPs. Many respondents expressed positive views towards EPNET and stated they found it very helpful (Valuable). Others were more specific in their praise, singling out the relevant information or resources they had received from people via the mailing list, as well as the fact they could learn from others exchanging ideas (Knowledge).

The vast majority of the Intimidating codings related to being put off commenting by the response to emails (1 stated they would like to use the service but didn't know how). Many participants expressed a fear of being attacked for giving their opinions and didn't view the forum as a safe space to debate ideas. The Unprofessional theme was a similar but distinct theme as it generally referred to any behaviour that others deemed inappropriate e.g. combative interactions or dominating the discussion. Any negative comment relating to the look or usability of the mailing list was coded as Poor interface.

Conclusions

Of those willing to answer a questionnaire on EPNET, almost all are EPs at some stage in their career. The vast majority never comment (either publicly or privately) though the main sentiment expressed is appreciation of the service as it gives them a large pool of professional insight and resources to draw from. However, a significant number expressed dissatisfaction with a small minorities' behaviour on the forum, stating they would like to engage more but do not feel comfortable doing so.