Report on the PSGB
Survey of Members' Interests

In September, 1995, a survey examining the main areas of interest of Society members was sent to 537 members. The aim of the survey was to determine the membership representation from different research disciplines in order to assist the Society in making decisions about its activities, for example, topics for future meetings. The return rate was 36.3%. Of those responding, the following results were found.

The majority of those responding were full members (78%). Associate members and student members comprised 10% and 9% of the sample respectively, while the remaining 3% did not know their membership status. Those surveyed were mainly in the "researcher/academic" category (66%). 14% were an "interested party", and 11% were "primate care-takers". The remaining 9% included vets, teachers, a welfare officer, a zoo curator, a television researcher, and a librarian.

The most common answer to the question "what best describes your main primate interests?" was "all primates" (32%). "Apes" was the second most popular response (22%), followed by "Old World monkeys" (16%), "New World primates" (14%) and "prosimians" (6%). Several people (7%) ticked a combination of categories, and 3% indicated that hominids and fossil primates were their main interests.

The next question posed was related to peoples' interest in captive or field primates. Exactly half of the respondents were broad in their interests indicating that the combination of both best described them. "Field primates" were more popular than "captive primates" as the main interest (28% and 16% respectively). The remaining 6% were primarily those interested in fossils and hominid evolution.

The final question was directed at the primary area of interest (respondents were asked to rank their interests). "Behaviour" was the most popular highest ranked response (35%), with "conservation" (12%) and "zoo/captive breeding" (10%) next. "Evolution" received 9% of the total of first ranks; "ecology", 5%; "applied/biomedical", 4%; "physiology", 3%; and "anatomy" and "genetics" 2% each. Some respondents (10%) gave no clear ranking of preference. The "other" category contained a wide range of responses including taxonomy, welfare, vetenary sciences, bio-mechanics, functional morphology, demography and population biology and education, comprising 8% of the response. The number of categories ranked was left to the respondents' discretion. The number of categories per respondent that were ranked was most often 4-5, indicating that most members are interested in a variety of areas.

In summary, it is pleasing to see such a broad range of backgrounds and areas of interest in this sample of the Society's members. Given that one of the aims of the survey was to determine whether the Society is serving its members well, with particular emphasis on the topics of its scientific meetings, it is of interest to examine the topics and locations of scientific meetings organised by the Society over the past decade. Below are the topics of PSGB Winter Scientific meetings which are always held in London (sometimes held in association with other Societies). Spring scientific meetings have also often had a theme, but more usually they have been proffered papers covering a wide range of topics. Their location changes from year to year, as shown below.

Year	Winter Scientific Meeting Topic	Spring Scientific Meeting Location
1986	Factors limiting Fertility in Primates	London
1987	The Need for Primate Models in Biomedical Research	Cambridge
1988	Social Knowledge in Primates	St. Andrews
1989	Beyond Captive Breeding	Liverpool
1990	Primates in Evolution	Twycross
1991	Ethological Approaches to Primate Laboratory Studies	Bristol
1992	Ecology of Social systems	Oxford
1993	Integrating Behaviour and Physiology	Durham
1994	Integrating Behaviour and Mechanism	Cambridge
1995	Biology and Conservation of New World Primates	Edinburgh

This demonstrates what a diverse range of topics have been covered in our meetings, and how Spring meetings have been well distributed around the country. The results of this survey have been useful to gauge the range of interests of members, and I thank all those who took the time to fill in the survey form.

Hannah Buchanan-Smith
Stirling University