Each year, NCFR staff undertake an important quality-improvement process to enhance the NCFR Annual Conference. This process is even more important to me now that I oversee the planning process for academic content from start to finish, including pre- and post-conferences and the live-streaming program. In doing so, I work with two very dedicated committees: the Annual Conference Program Committee and the Committee to Strengthen the Submission and Review Process. While the Program Committee plans the conference, individuals (e.g., the program chair) often have ideas to improve the quality of the conference. The Committee to Strengthen the Submission and Review Process discusses methods for enhancing the conference proposal submission and review process and the overall conference. These committees provide valuable insights and we are grateful for their involvement in NCFR!

As I worked with these committees and learned all the minute details of conference planning, many methods to improve the conference became evident to me. We have already implemented several of those changes for the 2017 Annual Conference, and I would like to share those with you—some of which you likely have already observed.
 

Conference Quality Improvements 

A couple of important concerns emerged when evaluating the 2016 conference that needed immediate attention.

One concern that had increased over the past few years was the decline in the number of presentations by many of the most accomplished scholars who are members of NCFR. Many NCFR members, including 2017 Conference Program Chair Maureen Perry-Jenkins, want to ensure that we have a high-quality conference.

We made two important changes this year to increase the quality of the conference and the number of proposals from accomplished scholars. First, individuals were allowed to submit more than one proposal as a first author. Second, Dr. Perry-Jenkins urged section chairs to invite and encourage multiple symposia highlighting well-known scholars in their respective fields. The section chairs did a phenomenal job organizing invited symposia, and we hit a record 846 proposals this year. Visit ncfr.org/conference for conference details.

Another concern arose around the poster sessions. We learned through the after-conference survey that some felt the poster sessions were not highly visible and were poorly attended, and that the 7:30 a.m. poster session time was too early. We also heard that there wasn’t enough time provided to attend all of the posters in a 45-minute session.

We are making big changes this year to alleviate these concerns. We are condensing the number of poster sessions to only five sessions, which will be held in a ballroom over the noon hours, during the President's Reception on Wednesday evening, and on Saturday morning. Additionally, rather than having 30 posters on display at one time, we may have as many as 90 posters in one session! Finally, the poster session time will be extended to a full 90 minutes (except on Saturday morning, which will still be 45 minutes).

Conference attendees will still see poster symposia during the poster sessions. Expect to see the poster symposium set apart from the rest of the posters in the same ballroom to allow for more discussion among those attending the poster symposium.

Peer-Review Process 

Historically, three reviewers — two professionals and one student or new professional — are assigned to each proposal submitted to the conference. One concern I heard was that sometimes only one or two reviewers completed a review. A related concern was that sometimes reviewers’ scores of a proposal were not consistent with one another. In both cases, section chairs sought additional reviewers to review the proposal.

This year, to minimize the number of proposals in need of an additional review, we encouraged section chairs to assign four reviewers to each proposal, including two to three experienced reviewers. That way, if one reviewer did not submit their review or if one of the scores was an outlier, the section chair would still have enough information to decide whether to accept the proposal.  

Another concern brought to our attention was that it was difficult to match reviewers with proposals focused on qualitative and quantitative research methodology. To provide some assistance in the matching process, we requested additional information on specific qualitative and quantitative methodology during the proposal submission and reviewer signup processes (i.e., asking reviewers to provide their area of methodological expertise).

All of the reviews were completed recently as I write this article, so it is uncertain whether either of these changes helped the peer-review process. We will evaluate both changes later to determine their effectiveness.

Continuing Education

NCFR is a provider approved by the National Board for Certified Counselors (NBCC) (ACEP No. 5984) to offer continuing education (CE) opportunities for those attending the conference. We also provide CE opportunities through the National Association of Social Workers (NASW). NBCC requires a renewal every three years and NASW requires a yearly application, and both require annual documentation to be kept about CE sessions offered. Over the years, the type of information NBCC and NASW requires us to submit has changed and gone beyond the information we collected during proposal submission.

To continue offering these CE opportunities, this year we requested additional information from authors about their conference proposals, such as session objectives, where they earned their degree, the field in which they earned the degree, and any licenses they hold. 

Other Changes 

• We have also implemented several smaller changes to the proposal submission and review processes to enhance the conference quality and make systems more efficient:

• We requested that authors submit their proposals only as PDF documents to ensure blind review.

• We reduced the proposal length from 1,000 words to “not to exceed 1,000” words to allow authors to submit more concise proposals.

• We deleted the option of “uncertain proposals” in the proposal process, which authors used in the past if they were unsure of which NCFR section to submit their proposal. The submitter was to contact the section chair or staff with questions.

• We asked reviewers to provide an enhanced professional biography to make it easier to match reviewers with submitted proposals.

We hope all these changes will increase the quality of the annual conference. Thank you to everyone who is involved in the Annual Conference Program Committee and the Committee to Strengthen the Submission and Review Process for making these changes possible. We also appreciate all of you who took the time to complete the after-conference evaluation survey; your comments are important to us.

We look forward to an exciting 2017 NCFR Annual Conference in Orlando, Florida, Nov. 15–18 (preconference activities and sessions on Nov. 14). We hope to see you there!