Who posts on Patient Opinion?

There are plenty of myths in circulation about the kinds of people who post on Patient Opinion, and the kinds of feedback they provide. We call these the "everybody knows" myths.

For example, "everybody knows" that only young people will give online feedback. Or only women. Or only the middle class. And "everybody knows" that you'll only hear feedback which is extremely positive or extremely negative.

In 2005 we were told that "everybody knows" that patients can't tell you anything about the quality of care (some people still think this). And all of these things have turned out to be completely, or mainly, wrong.

So to help you learn more about the people who are actually posting feedback about your services, we've just added a new "authors in summary" report, which you can create on demand or schedule for delivery, just like our other reports.

(Your subscription level has to include reports for you to access this, of course.)

And what does our new report tell us about the age of those who post their stories? Here are the data from 1,000 authors who provided data. (NB entering this data is optional, so we have to be mindful of response bias.)

How to view your own "authors in summary" report

If your subscription level includes reporting, you can make this report just like you would make other story-based reports. Like this:

1. Log into your subscription
2. Make a search for the stories you are interested in
3. Select "save my search as", then select the Report tab
4. Choose the "authors in summary" report from the report list, and a format from the file format list, then click generate.
5. If you want, save your report and add a delivery schedule

Two caveats

Before you get carried away, two caveats to bear in mind:

First, the stories we import from NHS Choices don't carry any data about authors.

Second, it is optional for authors to enter data about their age, gender, ethnicity and disability. Currently, only a minority add this data, although we expect this to increase over time.