FRM Revision Survey

[[email protected]]

Hi Everyone,

Suzanne at BT has very kindly let me post on your forum to ask for your help. We're doing some research into various financial market exams, and would love it if you could spend a couple of minutes to complete our (10 question) survey on FRM revision.

You can find the survey here: http://391420.polldaddy.com/s/frm-revision-survey

We'll share all the feedback with BT, and I'll happily make the reports available online too - I think your feedback and the subsequent outputs will be really helpful to future FRM candidates.

Many thanks for your time, and best of luck with your revision,
Hannah

 

[David Harper CFA FRM]

Hi Hannah,

In my opinion (ie., if I received this request to fill out a survey), I would be more motivated if I understood the rationale or the goal of the survey (specifically, what are you trying to achieve, what do you plan to do with the results?). In fact, i think the drawback of your request is: (i) you don't say who you (your organization) are and (ii) you don't say why exactly you are conducting the survey. Without specific context (or otherwise tangible motivation), I would be less inclined to help.

Nowadays it seems so difficult to solicit survey participation, you almost need a an incentive (or at least an "what's in it for me" which can include the motivation to help with a specific goal). I think you mentioned the rationale in your email, but I frankly cannot recall the motivation ... it's your call, of course, my observation is meant constructively. I look forward to the results! David

 

[[email protected]]

Hi David

Thanks for the feedback - much appreciated.

I work for a company based in the UK providing Continuous Medical Education (CME) and revision for UK-based post-graduate exams. Our website is www.pastest.co.uk We're performing research across a number of markets that at first glance have nothing to do with medical education, but do sometimes have a lot of commonality. Is the approach to revising for, for example, CFA, the same as the approach for the United States Medical Licensing Exam? How do post-graduates choose which revision they use, and how might that differ from market to market? In medicine, for example, word of mouth recommendation is the most important factor - we want to challenge assumptions like these to see how word of mouth recommendations change in a market such as FRM, where only small percentage of exam takers come from the UK.

I think, in terms of incentive, I have perhaps discovered my first key difference between the medical and financial markets! Normally when we distribute surveys (without an incentive), the response rate is extremely high. Successful candidates want to help those that follow, perhaps even helping them to avoid the mistakes they made in revision that they feel could be avoided; hence my offer to share our research with BT and the survey respondents.

I hope that answers your questions. Of course, if you (or anyone else) have any further questions, please feel free to ask away.

Kind regards
Hannah

 

[David Harper CFA FRM]

Hannah:

Awesome context, thank you! That is interesting hypothesis re difference between medical/financial; I'm impressed you can get high participation without incentives. (I didn't mean to be crass, rather it's my perception that people are overloaded with information/requests so it's an issue of attention/engagement...)

For what it's worth, and I'd imagine you are already aware: the biggest shift that i've perceived, with respect to peer-to-peer (P2P) candidate recommendations is a shift toward social media, in particular Facebook and LinkedIn. Specifically, for example:

* GARP (the FRM administrator) previously, for years, had their own onsite FORUM, which they apparently removed about the time their facebook page gained traction (ergo: their forum effectively migrated to FB page)
* In the last year, I've seen an exponential increase in P2P exam query/conversation in LinkedIn groups (including GARP's but not limited to). In fact among my linkedin groups, lately there is daily conversation with respect to FRM exam prep advice.
* Along these lines, I predict (but it has not yet happened) an uptick in twitter #hashtags for this purpose
* I also predict youtube (IMO, the most underestimated social platform) will be used for this, given its likely reach into living rooms

We will copy a link to this survey in Monday's upcoming newsletter (again) to see if we can assist with further participation. Thanks!

 

[[email protected]]

Fantastic, David. Thanks so much.

Yes, definitely, but interestingly, we are increasingly finding that social media is seen as an 'escapism' from revision, rather than an additional revision channel. We even built a Facebook revision app which we never launched as our medical students used Facebook primarily as a break from revision, and saw a lot of distinction between leisure/education. I'm sure that will change in time. The UK revision market is certainly a few steps behind the US with LinkedIn - a fantastic resource for candidates, but definitely underused for us!

 

[David Harper CFA FRM]

Fascinating, that resonates frankly as an even deeper insight, with respect to social media. Of course, in addition to leisure/education there is a distinction between (i) establishing criteria, evaluating and selecting a revision provider (pre revision?) and (ii) doing revision. "Revision" is clearly an common international term, I hope i am not the only American who needs to look it up (i am naive, i associate "revision" with the latter stages of taking practice exams rather than the entire prep process)!

Arguably, so far current social is more suited to evaluation/selecting revision than doing revision.

Even with respect to revision evaluation, social platforms can be shallow or, maybe i mean, too democratic. For example, a common buying criteria is invariably "how many practice questions do you have?" and typical social threads rarely seem to go beyond numerical answers, with everybody who answers receiving an equal input. Which is frustrating because we know quantity of PQ is not the only criteria. But, in an one-to-one "conversation" with somebody who has passed the exam, you are much more likely to hear about the importance of the quality/relevance/depth of practice questions. Anyway, thanks for sharing your thoughts on an important topic! David