In October 2002, personalized letters and brochures were mailed to 14,574 physicians from 42 specialties who were randomly selected from the database of the American Medical Association (AMA). The letters explained the background and use of the Pathway physician specialty profiles in providing career counseling for medical students and the need to update the information since their last update in 1998. The brochure contained an explanation of the Pathway physician specialty profiles and provided a web site URL and directions for completing the web survey for the specialty profiles. Reminder postcards were mailed to all 14,574 physicians approximately three weeks after the initial mailing.

Due to a low response rate, another random sample of 4,000 physicians was selected from the AMA physician database to whom a broadcast e-mail message was sent with the same information as in the initial letter. The e-mail message contained the URL for the specialty profile survey and directions for completing the survey online. Based on a favorable response rate for this sample, a third random sample of 10,000 physicians was selected from the AMA
database to whom the e-mail message was sent. A reminder e-mail message was sent to the third group approximately two weeks after the initial mailing.

A total of 2,746 surveys were completed. After cleaning the data, a total of 2,407 usable surveys remained.

Eighteen critical factors were identified to include in the survey. Most of these critical factors had been included in previous surveys for the Pathway specialty profiles since the inception of the Pathway Program in 1989. Members of the current Pathway Advisory Board reviewed and revised the critical factors to clarify the questions and to reflect the changes in the practice of medicine since the most recent update in 1998. Each of the critical factors used a 10-point Likert scale for the responses. Due to the wording for each of the critical factor items, the anchors on the Likert scales varied to match the critical factor, but most ranged from a “Low” response to a “High” response. For example, the anchors for the question about the diversity of work ranged from “Great deal of routine” to “Great deal of diversity,” while the anchors for manual/mechanical activities ranged from “Never” to “Most of the time."