Survey Shows Peer Reviews Carry Most Weight With Public When Selecting a Dentist
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In a survey responded to by 1,427 registered DoctorBase patient-users in San Francisco County, we found some interesting data on how patients perceive the value of an online review from a doctor (peer) versus from a random user on a website.
The upshot? A mean average of 82% of respondents said that they would weigh the online review of another dentist as 2.0 to 3.5 times more credible than from a random stranger.
.As a guest on our newsletter, you are invited to leave a peer review for a fellow dentist you know is great – it’s free, painless, and spreads goodwill 
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Here’s the breakdown of stats from the survey:
- 4,119 registered patient-users of DoctorBase with a San Francisco, CA zip code were sent our survey. Of those, 1,427 responded to our survey request for a 34.6% participation rate. Since most email surveys are lucky to break a 10% response rate, it seems like this was a hot topic for many of our patient-users.
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- Of those 1,427 that responded:
27% said that they would weigh a peer review “2.0x” as much as a patient review.
24% said that they would weight a peer review “2.5x” as much as a patient review.
19% said that they would weight a peer review “3.0x” as much as a patient review.
16% said that they would weight a peer review “3.5x” as much as a patient review.
8% said that a peer review was “the same” as a patient review.
5% said they were “not sure”.
1% said that they felt peer reviews “were suspicious.” However, 78% of this segment (11 respondents of 15 which constituted this 1% segment) felt that online reviews in general “were suspicious.”
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* Have topic ideas for future surveys? We have patient users in 12 metro markets! You can ping me at marzieh at doctorbase dot com
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Marzieh Oghabian, DDS (Pittsburg, CA)
