In September 2011 the survey was submitted to a
validation by a panel of experts and a pilot test. In
addition a blog of the project was started online to
share the progress of the research project. Once the
instrument was reviewed and adjusted and versions
were produced in both Spanish and Portuguese, the
survey was distributed among specialist networks
during the months of November and December of
2011. Each network contained a different number of
members and each member received an email that
invited them to take part in the survey. These included:
ALAIC (253 members); AE-IC (557), the Latin
Society for Social Communication (128); Friends of
the Latin Magazine for Social Communication (583)
and the Ibero-American Academic Network in
Communication (104). In total 1,625 communication
researchers received an invitation to participate in the
study (a number that is unknown is one that represents
the universe of communication researchers in Ibero-
America, although it is possible that there were duplications
among members of the networks), of which
316 responses were received (a rate of effective response
rate of 19.44%), which represents a population
of clinical cases.